Yes, and there are a lot of ways to do it. First, you must have the courage to stand up and fight for yourself and not just hang your head and plead guilty. Second, you must use the tools available to you to fight the charges. The tools include not only a toolbox of legal defenses but the skill and knowledge to use the facts of your case to illuminate where reasonable doubt exists or to even prove innocence. Yes, you can beat a DUI charge, regardless of your test results and the legal limit.
Legal motions, objections, and arguments are a great way to beat a DUI. Your case should be analyzed from the very beginning for legal flaws, which have nothing to do with whether you were over the legal limit. There are strict rules controlling how a DUI case is to be handled in court, and, if the rules are broken, a judge can dismiss your case.
From the time of arrest, the clock starts running. The officers must process you through the system and release you or bring you before a judge. If they do not do this correctly, you may be able to beat the case. Another legal clock starts running after you have been arraigned or advised of the charges against you, and you have pleaded not guilty. If you have been released on bail or your own recognizance (O.R.), the prosecutor has 45 days to take you to trial, or the case should be dismissed. Many times, the District Attorney cannot get their case together in time, and they are forced to ask the judge to dismiss the charges.
At other times, the case can be dismissed when the evidence of your alleged wrongdoing is suppressed or thrown out. Defense attorneys can file motions to request that judges suppress evidence when it is improperly obtained. For example, if the cops make an illegal profile stop of someone without the proper reasonable suspicion, the judge can find that the cops’ behavior was inappropriate. In such a case, the judge should grant the defense attorney’s request to throw out the observations of field sobriety tests and the breath or blood test. When this type of motion is granted, the prosecutor does not have the evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. At that point, the case should be dismissed.
Trial is another great time to beat your DUI, even if your test result shows you as being over the legal limit. Your defense attorney is “at home” in a courtroom setting; the cops are not. The cops want to be out in the field making arrests, not in the courtroom being looked at under the microscope of cross-examination. When you question the cop about how he/she actually performed their investigation compared to how they were supposed to have done so, the cops lose credibility. The cop’s loss of credibility has nothing to do with the defendant or their alcohol level. When the officer loses credibility, defendants beat a DUI charge.
During trial, a good defense attorney will be able to prevent unreliable or irrelevant testimony from getting to the jury. Prosecutors often try to get the ugly evidence of a chemical test result in front of the jury. This chemical test evidence is very technical and usually requires that several witnesses testify to properly lay a foundation for the result. Prosecutors are often unable to prove that the chemical tests given are reliable or trustworthy. If the test is not deemed trustworthy, a judge will not let a jury hear the evidence. With no chemical test result in evidence, you can beat the DUI.
Even if the breath or blood tests are shown to the jury, the evidence still needs to be explained. A chemical test that is given an hour or so after the actual driving took place does not tell anyone what the actual alcohol level was at the time of driving. The district attorney needs to prove that a person was driving, and that at the time they were driving, they were over the legal limit. So how do you use the test results from an hour after the driving took place to figure out what the level was at the time of driving? The answer: expert witnesses. Experts can explain what factors must be considered in order to do a reliable analysis of the chemical test. Most of the time, the necessary information does not exist or is not reliable, and the experts cannot come to an agreement about what the alcohol level was at the time of driving. No agreement on what the alcohol level was means that you just beat your DUI, even though you were technically over the legal limit at the time of the test.
The proper functioning of the breath or blood testing equipment is another area where a lot of DUI cases are won. The breath or blood testing machines that are used (such as the Breathalyzer) have strict regulations controlling how and when they are maintained, calibrated, and checked for accuracy. The technicians maintaining these machines may not be properly trained, or the city or county may not have the money to pay for proper maintenance or repairs. If the testing equipment does not work properly, the results may not be relied upon. If the proper maintenance protocols are not followed, you can beat your DUI irrespective of alcohol level.
Many people wrongly think that because they were arrested, they are guilty. This is simply not true, and many people are pleasantly surprised to find out that even though they were told that their alcohol level was over the legal limit, in reality, it was not, and they are not guilty.
For a free case evaluation please call Los Angeles DUI defense attorney Mark Rosenfeld at (310) 424-3145.
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