In another case I had, the client sleeping in his car was a musician. He had gotten a flat tire and he did not want to leave his equipment. His equipment such as amps and instruments were expensive and important to him; therefore, he was afraid to leave his car unattended overnight.
When the officers observed him in the morning, they thought that he was impaired when he was actually just sick. We spent a good deal of time talking to the City Prosecutor about it and attempting to negotiate a settlement.
Going to Trial: Establishing Credibility Issues about the DUI Investigation
We decided that because of his innocence, we wanted to go forward to trial. We were able to get an acquittal where our client was found not guilty of all charges. A lot of that was due to the fact that there was no driving, but also there were some officer credibility issues in the DUI investigation.
It came down to the training and the experience of the officer. I was able to cast doubt about the way that he did his investigation as far as the standardized field sobriety test. We were able to show that the field sobriety test was not done correctly and that the results were not trustworthy.
We also went into the medical condition of my client and the illness itself to show how that would affect field sobriety test. We were able to show that the officer just didn’t take the right safety precautions to make sure that he was conducting a proper DUI investigation.