If you get pulled over on drunk driving allegations, you may be arrested. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be convicted. You still have to go through the court process, and you have the option to fight the charges.
One potential reason to fight the charges is if you believe the police made serious mistakes during the DUI stop. Such errors can affect the admissibility or validity of evidence in your case. In some instances, significant law enforcement errors could lead to the charges being dropped. Below are two examples of such mistakes.
Lack of reasonable suspicion
To begin with, police must have reasonable suspicion to make a traffic stop. They cannot simply pull you over at random and then look for evidence of impairment after the fact. For example, officers cannot pull over every driver leaving a local bar and wait to see if someone is over the legal limit.
Reasonable suspicion can take many forms, such as driving mistakes, traffic violations or simple errors like driving without headlights on. However, officers must have a valid reason for stopping you before administering a breath test or field sobriety test.
Breath test mistakes
Even if the police have a valid reason for the stop, they can still make mistakes during the breath test. For instance:
- The device used may not be from an approved list.
- The device might not have been properly calibrated, leading to inaccurate results.
- The officer may not have had the necessary training to administer the test correctly.
Any of these issues could result in the breath test results being thrown out of court.
As you can see, understanding all of your options is critical when facing criminal charges. Mistakes made by law enforcement could significantly impact your case and its outcome.
