DUI BLOG

Most of the time, officers don’t know that a person is actually drunk when they pull that person over. You can bet, however, that they’re suspicious. It’s not just the commission of a traffic violation itself that gives them suspicion. It could very well be a number of things.

So what do officers look for when spotting a suspected drunk driver?

Because people who are under the influence have trouble with vision and balance, they often have trouble driving in a straight line. This means that they may weave through traffic, cannot stay in their own lane, drift, straddle one side of a lane, swerve, and/or make wide turns. The California Court of Appeals has held that “pronounced weaving within a lane provides an officer with reasonable cause to stop a vehicle on suspicion of driving under the influence where such weaving continues for a substantial distance.”

Drivers who are under the influence also often have trouble gauging speed and distances. As a result, many drunk drivers have trouble stopping their vehicles as a sober person would. This includes stopping their vehicle too far from a curb or a stop sign as well as stopping their vehicle too suddenly.

Similarly, drunk drivers may also have trouble accelerating and often accelerate abruptly rather than gradually. They might also have trouble maintaining a consistent speed. Now it would be unreasonable to expect a person to maintain the speed perfectly, however the speed of drunk drivers often fluctuates more drastically than one might reasonably expect of a sober driver.

What I’ve mentioned are what officers look for, but what about what they listen for? I’m not talking about the sound of drunk drivers. I’m talking about anonymous tips from callers who may suspect that a person is driving under the influence. Can an officer use an anonymous tip to help him or her “spot” a drunk driver?

In the recent case of Navarette v. California, the United States Supreme Court held that an anonymous tip can give law enforcement the authority to pull someone over on suspicion of driving under the influence. This is true even though it is impossible to verify the reliability of the tip and the officer has not witnessed any driving that would indicate intoxication.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, these are the things that give officers the authority to pull someone over with only the suspicion that they may be driving under the influence. These things alone, however, are not enough to give the office the probable cause to arrest the person on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Once pulled over for the reasons mentioned above, the officer can substantiate their suspicion that the driver is under the influence with their own observations in making the stop. These are the pieces of information that have become as common in DUI police reports as the officer’s name, namely the smell of alcohol, the slurring of words, and the bloodshot and watery eyes of the driver. The officer can then further substantiate their suspicion and produce the probable cause needed to make the DUI arrest if the driver agrees to and fails field sobriety tests and/or produces a pre-arrest breathalyzer result above a 0.08 blood alcohol content.

Whether you’ve had a drink or not, be mindful of what the prying eyes of law enforcement officers are looking for in spotting drunk drivers.

Police are supposed to be neutral and gather the evidence whether incriminating or exculpatory. They are not supposed to side with either the prosecution or the defense. This simply isn’t the case. More often than not, police try to find incriminating evidence, and only incriminating evidence, even when it might not exist…

…except when the suspect is a district attorney.

Earlier this month, a driver called 911 to report a suspected drunk driver in Silver City, New Mexico. Cell phone video confirmed the suspected drunk driver’s poor driving.

When Silver City police arrived, they noticed that the suspect was recently re-elected district attorney of Grant, Luna, and Hidalgo counties, Francesca Estevez.

An officer’s body camera captured the bizarre interaction between police and Estevez.  

"I have a flat! And I kept going over, and over!" Estevez said from inside the car. "I was coming in from Deming and the car kept swinging this way!"

Moments later, Estevez said that she was coming from Lordsburg.

In addition to the inconsistent statement, Estevez was slurring her speech, having trouble on her feet, fumbling with her phone, and went on a strange rant.

“We don’t want the U.S. Department of Justice to start looking down here,” she said. “It’s gotten to that point. Most of you are good.”

“What do you think?” asked Officer Leticia Lopez who was wearing the body camera. “She’s loaded, she almost fell down,” responded Officer Kyle Spurgeon.

New Mexico State Police were called in to assist with the stop. However, Officer Alyssa Carasco of the New Mexico State Police Department appeared to be disinterested in initiating a DUI investigation.

“If you have a problem with me not doing anything, then you can go ahead and do something. I’m not,” Carasco told Lopez.

Then the video appears to show Estevez appear to practice a heel-to-toe field sobriety test along a crack in the sidewalk.

What’s more, as Estevez was allowed to drive away, she ran into a curb right in front of the officers.

Had this been anyone else (well except maybe another officer), they would have been investigated and arrested on suspicion of DUI.

And so I ask: Who are the police working for?

New Mexico State Police has launched an internal investigation. It has yet to be determined whether Silver City Police will do the same.

While we’ve been on the topic of DUI of marijuana, it only seemed appropriate to talk about some of the legal defenses that may be raised with this charge.

Just like with a DUI of alcohol, the officer must have probable cause to believe that you are driving while under the influence before he or she can arrest you. The officer has probable cause when they have apparent and trustworthy facts that would lead a reasonably intelligent and prudent person to believe that the driver is driving under the influence. The information that officers use to “find” probable cause is poor driving, the smell of marijuana, blood shot watery eyes, slowed speech, poor performance on field sobriety tests, and admissions by drivers that they have ingested marijuana. Only after a lawful arrest must a driver submit to a chemical test. If an officer makes an unlawful arrest because they didn’t have probable cause, the results of a chemical test showing the presence of marijuana should be inadmissible.

This is precisely why I always advise my clients to not say anything to law enforcement and decline field sobriety tests. Not only is it your right to do so, it preserves the argument that the arrest was unlawful and therefore evidence of marijuana use from a chemical test is inadmissible.

While the defense of an unlawful arrest applies to both DUI of alcohol and DUI of marijuana, there are a few defenses that are unique to a DUI of marijuana.

Unlike alcohol, Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of marijuana stays is a user’s system long after ingestion. Therefore, a person can test positive for THC well after the person smoked marijuana and well after the person was intoxicated, sometimes as much as weeks afterwards.

There is a strong correlation between blood alcohol content and intoxication. In other words, law enforcement knows that if a person has, for example, a blood alcohol content of 0.12 percent, it is highly likely that the person is intoxicated and unfit to drive a vehicle. The correlation between THC and intoxication, on the other hand, is not as clear. THC is measured in nanograms per milliliter of blood. For example, Colorado, which have legalized recreational marijuana, has made it illegal to drive with 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. A person, however, can have 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood in their system weeks after smoking marijuana and certainly well after the person is unfit to drive. Therefore, there is the defense that you are not driving under the influence of marijuana even though you may have THC in your system.

Should California approve the roadside test to determine whether a person has ingested marijuana “recently,” prosecutors still need to prove that the use of marijuana actually impaired a person’s ability to drive to secure a DUI of marijuana conviction. If the driver refuses field sobriety tests, there’s not much evidence, other than the driving pattern, that a person’s ability to drive was impaired. Therefore, another realistic defense is that the person’s driving was not impaired even though they had recently smoked marijuana.

In any event, hiring a qualified California DUI attorney is essential to be able to successfully assert any of the aforementioned legal defenses to a California DUI of marijuana charge. As you can see, they are quite complex and I’ve only scratched the surface.

It’s no big secret that many people have come to distrust law enforcement. The public distrust peaked in recent times after the highly publicized, and criticized, officer-involved shootings of Kelly Thomas, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Freddy Gray, to name a few.

In response, several law enforcement agencies began to issue body cameras to their officers with the hopes that incidences like these stop or, at a minimum, provide unbiased, objective information on what actually occurred.

In fact, even President Barack Obama urged law enforcement agencies throughout the country to issue body cameras to officers and offered $20 million in federal funds towards obtaining them.

As of April this year, Davis Police will be the latest law enforcement agency to be equipped with body cameras to record interactions with the public.

“It’s a great evidence-gathering tool for us,” said Lt. Tom Waltz. “It’s also another level of transparency. In situations where there’s a dispute about what occurred, we have a recording of it.

Davis officers will not be allowed to delete or modify footage obtained from the body cameras. They will however, be allowed to view the footage before giving a statement or preparing a police report. The footage will be uploaded to a server following an officer’s shift, or the footage can be uploaded immediately in cases where it is necessary to view the footage immediately.

With the use of body cameras increasing amongst law enforcement agencies here in California, the questions arises, “what effect will body cameras have on DUI stops?”

Many law enforcement agencies currently use what are commonly known as “dash cams;” cameras mounted to the dash of police squad cars. The cameras capture the DUI stop and provide information on whether the officer had the probable cause to make the traffic stop. The camera, however, is limited in that it cannot capture what the officer regularly uses as a justification to begin investigating and ultimately making an arrest for a DUI; the up-close interaction with the person whom they’ve pulled over.

What’s more, when officers have a person perform field sobriety tests, they often take them out of the view of the dash cam. The officers then prepare a police report which indicates that the person failed the field sobriety test, sometimes without even explaining how or why they came to the conclusion that the person failed.

The job of police is to obtain information and evidence objectively. Unfortunately, this is often not the case.  Officer testimony and police reports are regularly made for the purpose of securing a DUI conviction and, as such, are biased.

A body camera, however, would serve to provide first-hand evidence to support officer claims that a person was, in fact driving drunk. If an officer justifies a DUI arrest by claiming that an arrestee had slurred speech and bloodshot, watery eyes, the footage would verify the officer’s claims. If an officer determines that a person failed field sobriety tests, the footage from the body camera could support the officer’s interpretation of the person’s performance.

Lt. Waltz of the Davis Police Department used a word that I think captures what will hopefully become effect of using body cameras for law enforcement; transparency. The purpose of the body camera is not necessarily to find incriminating evidence, exculpatory evidence, or even evidence of police misconduct. The purpose of the body camera is to find the truth and if that’s what it provides, I’m on board.

As the New Year approaches, law enforcement efforts to halt drunk driving is more elevated than it has been all of 2015. Part of the anti-DUI efforts will inevitably include DUI checkpoints. When I warn friends and family of the DUI checkpoints, often I get the question: how are DUI checkpoints constitutional?

Normally, if an officer wants to stop a vehicle, they must have probable cause to believe that the driver committed a crime. And normally when an officer pulls someone over, the driver commits a traffic violation in the officer’s presence thus giving them the probable cause to be pulled over.

Such is not the case with DUI checkpoints. While officers do, in fact, stop drivers at checkpoints, unfortunately they don’t need the generally required probable cause.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Michigan v. Dept. of State Police v. Sitz held that, while random checkpoints technically violate the 4th Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure, the governmental interest in preventing drunk driving outweighs the relatively minor infringement on the right not to be stopped absent probable cause.

The Court said, “[T]he balance of the State’s interest in preventing drunken driving, the extent to which this system can reasonably be said to advance that interest, and the degree of intrusion upon individual motorists who are briefly stopped, weighs in favor of the state program. We therefore hold that it is consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”

The California Supreme Court held in Ingersoll v. Palmer that random sobriety checkpoints are considered “administrative procedures” instead of “criminal investigations” making them more akin to agricultural checkpoints and airport screenings. The Court went on to say that there are factors which must be weighed to help determine the constitutionality of the checkpoint:

1.) The location of the checkpoint should be made at the supervisory level.

2.) The selection of vehicles stopped should be based on a neutral mathematical formula (such as every third car) rather than officer discretion.

3.) The checkpoint must be safe with proper lighting and signs.

4.) The checkpoint must be visible to oncoming motorists.

5.) The location of the checkpoint must be reasonable and in area most likely to yield DUI arrests.

6.) The time and duration of the checkpoint should minimize intrusiveness and maximize effectiveness.

7.) The length of the detention of motorists should be no longer than necessary to determine if a person is driving drunk.

8.) Law enforcement should publicize the checkpoint to minimize intrusiveness and maximize the deterrent effect of the checkpoint.  In 1993, the California Supreme Court, in People v. Banks, stated that although publicity is not a requirement of checkpoints, it helps.

In addition to these factors, the Court stated that motorists who seek to avoid the checkpoint must be allowed to do so. However, most checkpoints have officers waiting in idle patrol cars ready to chase down motorists who attempt to leave. It goes without saying that if an officer sees a motorize attempt to avoid a checkpoint, they’re automatically suspicious that the person is driving drunk.

While officers who witness motorists driving away from a checkpoint might be suspicious, there’s not much they can do about it…that is, unless they see you commit a traffic violation in the process of turning around.

If you don’t opt to turn around, exercise your 5^th amend rights and remain silent. The officers posted at the checkpoint will likely ask where you’re coming from, where you’re going to, and whether you’ve had anything to drink. You do not need to answer these questions and you can respectfully decline.

The officers may request that you take a preliminary screening alcohol test, otherwise known as a pre-arrest breathalyzer. This too you have the right to decline and you should. The only time a drive must submit to a chemical test, whether a breath test or a blood test, is after that driver has been lawfully arrested on suspicion of a California DUI.

Lastly, the officers at a DUI checkpoint may ask drivers to perform field sobriety tests. As I’ve said multiple time before, field sobriety checkpoints are notoriously unreliable and subject to the self-serving interpretations of the officer. Fortunately, these too are optional. Never voluntarily perform these tests. While you may think you can “pass” them, many times even sober people fail.

Yes, California DUI checkpoints are constitutional. However, there are things that you can do this New Years to protect yourself should you find yourself driving through one.