Standardized field sobriety tests are subject to interpretation, although there are certain things the officers are trained to look for. The officers are trained to do a preliminary medical screening to ask whether or not the person was under doctor’s or dentist’s care, in order to screen out those potential issues.
Someone may not perform well on field sobriety tests for a variety of reasons. Diabetes is a disease with symptoms that may appear very similar to someone who is driving under the influence, so it would be important to bring that information to an attorney’s attention so they could properly defend the case and properly analyze the field sobriety tests as well as the chemical tests, breath, or blood tests.
There are many factors that people may not be thinking about. If somebody had a bad leg they might tell their attorney that they could not do the Walk and Turn test. Other factors such as Gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD), can affect breath testing.
There may be environmental factors that affect testing. For example, someone who worked around volatile organic compounds for a living, someone who worked in a beauty salon or an auto shop would be surrounded by a lot of things that could get into their system that might read falsely on breath testing equipment, and there are similar potential problems with blood testing and potential blood diseases as well.
It would be important to disclose to the attorney any physical or medical conditions that may exist. It would be best to err on the side of caution and cooperate with the attorney, give them as much information about themselves as a person and about past events and the events of that particular day or night because everything could potentially become a defense.
Should the Person Mention All Their Medical Conditions?
A lot of different factors come into play when dealing with a case of driving under the influence. Somebody’s medical condition can affect their DUI case, whether it was because of medications they were on or because of physical injuries they may have suffered. It would be important to not only disclose the treatment they were currently on but also any medical care they may have received in the past.
Even if the client was not sure whether the condition would relate to a driving under the influence case, they would still want to disclose that information to their attorney because it would be important to disclose all those medical conditions to the attorney. It would be covered by the attorney-client privilege and it might turn out to be very helpful in preparing a defense for the particular case.
A knee surgery or a rotator cuff surgery would affect somebody’s performance on field sobriety tests and it is something that should be disclosed. It would be important to bring it to the attorney’s attention if somebody suffered from a different medical condition that might be neurological or that might be a breathing condition such as asthma. Some people may have reduced lung capacity for various reasons which might affect breath testing.
Where blood testing is involved, the person could be taking different medications which might show up in the blood and could potentially affect the analysis of the blood sample.
What If the Person Was Caught with Prescription Medications?
Drug DUIs are a new wave, so law enforcement and prosecution aggressively pursue DUI drug cases, both for illegal drugs or prescription drugs. The district attorney’s office and local city prosecutor’s offices prosecute a drug DUI the same way as they would an alcohol DUI, so even if the person was on prescription medication at a therapeutic dose, they could still be looking at the same consequences as somebody who was driving under the influence of alcohol.
I am currently working on a case out of Long Beach where the person was alcohol free, so there was no alcohol in his system at all, but he was on a therapeutic dose of prescribed muscle-relaxant and the city prosecutor’s office will not relent from a full-blown DUI charge. This would result in the ignition interlock device, a breath test machine in the car and of course alcohol classes, all of which are completely inappropriate for those being treated with legal prescriptions while under a doctor’s care.
Such a charge would also cause a license suspension where the Department of Motor Vehicles has not and will not suspend unless there was a conviction in court. Those consequences would be unacceptable and unrelated to any alleged crime, so because of that, we would have to take the case to trial. These things need to be zealously defended and advocated against, otherwise good and honest people could go to jail for invalid reasons.
For more information on Prescription Drugs and DUI, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you’re seeking by calling (310) 424-3145 today.
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