A DWI conviction can forever change life as you know it. It can lead to incarceration, the loss of your driving privileges, fines, loss of employment, and consequences for your child custody arrangement. These direct consequences can have ripple effects on your life, too, making it hard to secure new employment, maintain housing, and build your familial relationships.
We don’t say all of that to scare you. Rather, we highlight these effects to demonstrate the importance of aggressively defending yourself against drunk driving allegations. Even if you feel like there’s too much evidence to fight back against the prosecution, we encourage you to consider the full breadth of your criminal defense options, as you might find ways to block incriminating evidence from being used against you.
But what criminal defense options are available to you?
There’s no one criminal defense strategy in drunk driving cases. The approach you take is dependent upon the evidence the prosecution intends to present against you and the facts of your case. However, here are some defense options that may be available to you:
- Arguing that your traffic stop was illegal: Many drunk driving arrests are made during a traffic stop after the police identify signs of intoxication. Regardless of the evidence they gather pertaining to intoxication, if the police conducted your traffic stop illegally, then that evidence is illegally seized. In this instance, you can likely block the prosecution from using that evidence against you, which could completely derail the prosecution’s case against you.
- Pointing out breath test inaccuracies: Although breath test results are hailed as being an accurate assessment of intoxication, they’re anything but. These testing devices are prone to error, and that risk is amplified when the police improperly store, wrongly calibrate, or mistakenly use them. If you can show law enforcement’s errors here, then you can diminish the power of breath test evidence.
- Highlight field sobriety test errors: Field sobriety tests are used by law enforcement to generate evidence of intoxication and acquire justification for a breath test request or an outright arrest. Yet, these tests are far from accurate. The police often give poor instructions and they misread test results. They also sometimes fail to consider other issues that contribute to your performance on these tests, such as unlevel ground, a dark environment, and your medical conditions. Raising these issues in court might help you effectively push back against the prosecution’s case.
- Show chain of custody errors: Before evidence can be presented against you, prosecutors must demonstrate that it is what they purport it to be. If they can’t account for the handling of that evidence, or if it becomes clear that evidence was mishandled, then you could successfully move to suppress that it. This can be a strong move, especially if it pertains to a blood sample that was subsequently tested for alcohol content.
Aggressively defend against DWI charges to protect your future
If you improvise your DWI criminal defense, then you put yourself at risk of a bad outcome, including being hit with the penalties associated with a drunk driving conviction. To protect your future, you need to develop the most aggressive criminal defense available. So, now is the time to start gathering evidence, assessing applicable statutory and case law, and turning to the rules of evidence.
You might not know where to start in doing that, but that’s OK. You can find help in navigating your case so that you can rest assured that you’re protecting your interests as fully as possible.
