It's getting weird out there....
A DUI defendant came to see me yesterday from across the bay bridge; she blew a .12 in the breathalizer and a .15 on the PBT (preliminary breath test offered on the street to determine if a DUI arrest is warranted). She was wondering how her BAC (breath alcohol content) could drop in the matter of minutes that it took to get from the street to the barracks. She was also concerned about the results of her field sobriety tests. I told her not to worry because it was very unlikely the case would ever get that far; you see, she was the victim of a particularly nefarious type of transaction- the DUI/DWI pretextual stop. A Queen Anne's county police officer stopped this citizen because her license plate had that black plastic border around it that you get from the dealer when you buy a new car. That black plastic border was the entire basis for the stop!
A pretextual DUI arrest is one that is made, not necessarily for the purpose of a DUI investigation or arrest but rather in order to stop the car to see what the police may be able to come up with. Some times pretextual stops are executed with a "legal basis" but many times, they are not even legal stops and therefore are in complete violation of the people's 4th amendment right to be free of illegal searches and seizures. The strange thing is that the police do not seem to understand that if they stop a car with no cognizable legal basis, such as in this case, all evidence that is subsequently acquired is considered "fruit of the poisonous tree" and subsequently suppressed at trial. Once that happens the entire case goes away.
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