Maryland DUI Lawyer Blog

I recently read an article in The Aspen Times about a woman in Colorado that blew a .23 at following a DUI arrest but her case was thrown out at trial. Apparently this is news worthy in Aspen but in reality, it is not, it is just the law working the way it is supposed to. You see, in order to lawfully stop a citizen’s car, a police officer needs R.A.S. Reasonable Articulable Suspicion that a criminal or traffic offense is being committed. While this level of suspicion is low, (ie., it is not the normal criminal standard “beyond a reasonable doubt” which is a high standard) it still requires some “objective” proof on the part of the law enforcement officer “Leo”. That is to say, that LEO cannot just subjectively say, I don’t like this person’s looks so I’m going to pull them over, or he just crossed the white shoulder line for 3/10s of one second so I’m going to pull this person over for DUI. Those types of stops are not legal and a judge should suppress any evidence flowing from such an illegal stop. This is what the Judge determined in Aspen when he threw out all evidence flowing from the stop, but since the defendant blew a .23 this attracted people’s attention.
The truth is, the police can be overzealous in their attempt to bolster their DUI arrest numbers, echem, I mean, in their attempt to remove drunk drivers from the streets of Maryland and other states.

Continue reading "Lack of Probable Cause" »

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.

Continue reading "It's getting weird out there...." »