Charged with a DUI? 6 Tips to Help Your Defense

No one wants to experience being arrested for a DUI. Whether you had been drinking or not, a DUI conviction could have a significant impact on your life. It may affect your ability to drive, which can have knock-on effects on your career and personal life. When you’re facing a DUI charge, an experienced attorney can help you argue your case. With the right legal advice and support, you might be able to get the charges dropped or reduced. You could also ensure that if you are found guilty, the consequences are as reasonable as possible.

6 WAYS TO BOLSTER YOUR DUI DEFENSE

A good lawyer will help you mount the best defense, but it’s helpful if you know what sort of approaches they should be taking. Here are some of the things you can do and defenses you can raise.

Document What You Can

When you appear in court, it’s crucial to have a clear idea of what happened and what you’re going to say. Documenting everything you remember from the scene and what happened when you were arrested will help you out later. Write down the details you remember so that you and your lawyer can go over them. This will help you get your story straight in court and can assist your lawyer with identifying the best defenses for you. There might also be witnesses from the scene who can provide their own helpful account of events.

Show You Were Stopped without Good Reason

Being arrested for a DUI usually starts with being stopped by the police. But they need to have a good reason for stopping you. If you can show that the stop is valid, it helps to make the rest of the case against you look less legitimate. Procedures need to be followed to make your arrest and prosecution legal. The officer must have a reasonable suspicion that you were under the influence or driving dangerously to stop you. If they didn’t, everything that happened after doesn’t really matter. It can get the charges dropped completely.

Question the Arrest

There are also other ways you might question your arrest and how it occurred. As well as needing a valid reason to stop you, the officer who makes your arrest needs probable cause to do so. The officer needs to have gathered sufficient evidence to suspect you of DUI, and that evidence can be required to be pretty robust. For example, just being able to smell alcohol or seeing an empty drink bottle or can is likely to not be enough. On top of this, they need to follow the right procedures to arrest you. If they didn’t read you your Miranda rights at the time, the arrest wasn’t valid.

Challenge Field Sobriety Test Results

One of the tests police officers may use to determine if you were driving under the influence is the field sobriety test. They might carry out these tests before using a breathalyzer to assess your current state. It can include things like asking you to walk in a straight line or recite the alphabet backward. However, these tests aren’t necessarily very reliable indicators of whether someone is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Your lawyer can argue that your performance in these tests may have been affected by a number of things, ranging from your natural balance and coordination to nerves or fatigue.

Question BAC Results

A breathalyzer test might be seen as a more reliable way to test if someone is under the influence of alcohol. However, there are still things that can go wrong. The results aren’t always accurate and can be challenged in a range of circumstances. For example, if there is alcohol currently in your mouth, this can cause an inaccurate reading. You might have had a sip of an alcoholic drink but you’re not over the blood alcohol limit. Or perhaps you recently used a mouth spray or took a medication that contains alcohol.

Raise the Observation Period

To ensure test results are accurate and establish cause for arrest, police officers should observe the drive for a period. In Virginia, they should be observed for at least 20 minutes before a breathalyzer test is carried out. If this didn’t happen, it can be raised as a defense in court.

GET THE BEST DEFENSE WITH AN EXPERIENCED DUI LAWYER

When you have been charged with a DUI offense, the best defense is paramount. Make sure you have an experienced and knowledgeable DUI or reckless driving lawyer to help you. Schedule a free consultation with our law firm to help dismiss your Virginia DUI charge.