Being Charged with DUI: Tactics That Your Lawyer Can Use to Get You Out
Being charged with DUI is not an easy thing to deal with. Your lawyer should find the best tactics on how to get you out of the situation, especially if you’re innocent. If you did not find one lawyer yet, maybe a Los Angeles DUI Attorney will be the best for you. You can find it here:
Los Angeles DUI Attorney
5670 Wilshire Boulevard
Suite #1860
Los Angeles, CA 90036
424-285-5400
https://www.losangeles-duiattorneys.com
We’ve prepared in this article the best tactics that your lawyer should use to get you out:
Test errors on breathalyzers
The DUI breath tests are the most common tests found when it comes to the blood alcohol concentration. Police come with small ones, while the bigger ones are found at the police station or at the hospital. However, is good to keep in mind that the breathalyzers don’t really measure the blood alcohol concentration in a direct way, but they measure the breath alcohol, then they multiply it by something known as “partition ratio” to actually estimate the BAC. These devices actually assume a partition ratio of the alcohol in your breath (exhaled) to the acohol in your blood, of 1:2100. But the true ratio varies from 1:1300 to 1:3000 and it really depends on the weight of the body, the breathing patterns, and the sex, the temperature of the body and the level of the hematocrit – that’s the red blood cell ratio. Get you
These DUI breath tests come with a lot of problems, such as the device’s margin of error, the physical differences between the drivers that actually affect the ratio, the improper maintenance of the device and the fact that the police officer uses it incorrectly.
You need to keep in mind that, even when the test is done great by the police officer, it can still have errors, and the rate is between .005 to .02%. The lawyer can challenge this, since there’s the .02% margin of error that could lower the tests below the alcohol limits, that’s of .08.
Why did they stop you, again?
When the police officers stop you, they need to have a reason. A good one. Traffic stops that are temporary detention by the police, are considered an attack under the 4th Amendment. When they stop you, they usually do it for running stop lights or speeding. If they don’t have any reason, yet they still stop you, the lawyer has the right to file a motion to suppress evidence, to exclude the breathalyzer tests from the pieces of evidence that are admissible for the case. This represents a very good way to avoid DUI charges. These pieces of evidence won’t be used against you later, and the charges can be reduced, or the case can even get dismissed.
Filed sobriety test did inaccurately
The SFST, the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests are not really a reliable source that can give an insight into a driver’s impairment. There’s three of them and they must rely on specific data to verify how accurate they are. One Leg Stand (65% accurate), Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (77% accurate), Walk and Turn (68% accurate). The tests should be properly administered, in ideal conditions, but it’s not always like that. Many people don’t pass the sobriety test, and they certainly don’t do it in the middle of the night, on the side of the road. Talking about ideal conditions.
Next we present some reasons why you can fail the tests: poor balance and vertigo; the police office intimidates you; your coordination is poor or you’re not an athlete; there’s bad lighting or the surface you’re staying on is uneven; your clothes interfere with the testing.
Diabetes or diets like Atkins
Diseases, such as hypoglycemia, or diabetes, or low carb diets, like Atkins or Paleo can be the factors that trigger Ketosis. Ketosis is a metabolic process that gets triggered in your body from the moment it realizes it does not have enough carbs from food to burn the energy. When you don’t eat enough carbs, your body will start burning fat cells and it will produce ketones. If you have diabetes, this is a sign you do not use as much insulin as you need.
Ketones are eliminated from the body when you urinate or when you breathe, and that’s when they convert in isopropyl alcohol. This is a mouth alcohol and it causes the devices with which they test the breath to read the alcohol wrongly.
Not an accurate DUI blood test
There are many ways in which a test can give wrong results. When it comes to blood, the blood sample should not sit, waiting for someone to come to process it. We all know that blood is an organic substance that starts to decompose at some point, because of the bacteria an enzymes. The thing with decomposition is that it can and will create alcohol in the blood. The blood samples that have no alcohol can get to readings of blood alcohol of .25 or even more – it depends on how much it fermented. Fermentation will make its appearance if a person from the lab does not refrigerate the samples properly, or they don’t add the proper amount of antibacterials.
Also, a blood test should only be ordered by courts in order to be accurate. The lawyer can use the “blood split motion tactic” – this will ask for the retest of the blood. This way, you’ll find out how your blood got stored and how the test was done.
Your blood could’ve been wrongly stored, or it could’ve fermented, or it could’ve been contaminated. In case errors come to light, then your lawyer should find a strategy to leave the blood tests out of the question.
 Raising blood alcohol
This was a good strategy when your blood alcohol level was still in the legal limits when you were driving, but then somehow rose above the .08 limit, when the police came to perform the test.
The alcohol takes about 45 minutes to 3 hours to be fully absorbed. This time varies and it really depends on your physiology, what food you ate and many other factors. To use this tactic, you and your lawyer will need a toxicology expert to examine the results of the blood tests and to put into the light a retrograde extrapolation analysis, that can show the fact that the driver had a rising blood alcohol level and that it was in the legal limits when he started to drive his car.
This tactic is really effective when there was a delay between you being pulled over and the test being administered. Also, when your blood alcohol level was close to the California one (in the range of .08 – .11). It must be crystal clear the fact that you did not show signs of intoxication, no swearing, no stumbled speech and no traffic violation. It also counts if you were near your destination when you were stopped – theoretically, if you wouldn’t have been stopped, then you could’ve gotten home in no time.
You were not driving
To convict you, they need to prove that you were driving under the influence a specific car. If they prove DUI, but there’s no car, there might be a problem. Try to remember if the police men find you in a parked car, or if your car was in an accident – it’s very important that no one saw you driving the vehicle.
California Title 17
The California Title 17 has some ruled for DUI blood alcohol tests. For example, people from lab musn’t use an alcohol-based cleaning agent in order to sterilize the draw site. Also, only those technicians who are authorized should perform the blood draw. He must add the correct amount of preservative and also anticoagulant in the sample, to make sure it will not clot or ferment. Also, both the anticoagulant and the preservative should not be expired and they should be properly mixed with the sample of your blood. Then, the sample should be put in a refrigerator, stored there safe and sound.
If your lawyer can prove that the requirements of the California Tile 17 were not met, then your blood alcohol test results will not be taken into account.
Misconduct and error in DUI police reports
Misconduct from police officers would cause DUI charges to be dismissed (in the best case), or not taken into account if the procedures were not properly followed. Here, it doesn’t matter if you really were driving under the influence, it’s how they did the reports.
Some issues may exist. Perhaps they did not follow the requirements of the California Title 17, or the DUI police reports come with errors, or missing information. Or – and this is where the nasty party begins – the evidence was illegally obtained, or manipulated, even made out, or the police officer did not give a testimony full of truth in court.
Mouth alcohol
The breathalyzers cannot really make the difference between ethyl alcohol (or ethanol) from some similar methyl group of chemical compounds that actually are in your mouth. The breathalyzers are made to catch an alveolar air from the deep on your lungs.
Also, mouth alcohol represents a problem – this does not happen because of alcohol. The device does not make the difference. You get mouth alcohol from oral meds or cough meds, from your asthma inhaler that has an ingredient called Albuterol, from a breath spray, and oral herbal extracts, from the little amounts of alcohol in soaked food that has been caught in your dental work. Also, regurgitating and blurping.
