DUI Stops
I have a question about what procedure is reguarding how breathalizer evidence could be used in court.
The situation would be a police officer pulls someone over, suspecting from their driving they are drunk. After pulling over, in effort to keep from receiving a DUI and instead, just a drunk in public and/or underage posession, the driver turns off the car and steps out, facing the police car. Driver opens a beer, or some other kind of closed alcohal and proceeds to drink as much as possible as fast a possible. If this occured, the breathalizer would be off as to how much the person consumed prior to driving, since quickly consuming a beer might put a small 120 female over the limit, but not a 250 pound man. Would type of alcohal matter(if driver began chugging a fifth, BAC would go up higher than a single beer)? What would the officer do? run out and try to stop you?
Thanks,
Nathan Smith
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: DUI Stops
In the unlikely(and most ill-advised)scenario which you've described, the officer would undoubtedly proceed with his standard routine for processing a suspected drunk driver, which would likely include field sobriety as well as alcosensor tests. The officer also would very likely be keeping careful notes regarding the
probable cause conduct of the driver which caused him to be stopped in the first place and there would likely be a videocam in the officer's vehicle recording the post-stop behaviour of the suspected drunk driver. The videocam as well as the officer's personal notes would be valuable evidence in prosecuting and convicting the driver in addition to whatever the BAC reading turned out to be.
It's also possible that if the driver opened the container of alcohol and began to consume it in a public place where such consumption was disallowed, he could be exposing himself to additional charges other than DUI.
One must finally conclude that the strategem offered here to throw off the breathelyser analysis by engaging in the precipitous and openly notorious consumption of alcohol and thereby defeating the DUI charge would not only fail miserably but would probably bring additional charges(including even obstruction of justice)upon the miscreant who attempted it.
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