Plain-language guidance on impaired-driving investigations, expert evidence, administrative hearings, and the technical record behind a case.
A DUI breath test may produce a number to three decimal places, but precision on a screen is not the same thing as unquestionable accuracy. Understanding the result requires understanding how it was obtained.
A BAC below .08 does not necessarily end a DUI investigation. A numerical alcohol threshold and impairment are related, but they are not always the same question.
A THC blood result can establish that THC was detected, but interpreting what that concentration means about driving impairment is substantially more complicated than interpreting alcohol BAC.
Breath and blood tests are both used in DUI investigations, but they do not collect or measure evidence in the same way. Those differences matter when interpreting the result.
A Drug Recognition Expert does considerably more than administer field sobriety tests. The DRE process is a standardized, multi-step evaluation designed to assess suspected drug impairment.
A 0.00 breath result can rule out an important alcohol theory, but an alcohol breath tester does not test for most drugs. That can cause a DUI investigation to shift direction.
A police report summarizes an officer's observations. Body-worn and dash-camera video can allow those observations to be examined directly, and sometimes the two tell different stories.
One of the most common phrases in DUI reports. Understanding it requires knowing what the six clues actually are, and whether the standardized examination was performed properly.
Everyone knows .08 is associated with DUI. Fewer people understand what the number represents, how blood and breath measurements differ, or what a result can and cannot prove.
A medication can be lawfully prescribed and still have effects relevant to driving. Finding a prescription drug in someone's blood is not automatically the same thing as proving impairment.
Why HGN, Walk-and-Turn, and One-Leg Stand testing is not a simple pass/fail exercise, and what a careful review actually asks.
A step-by-step look at the twelve-part DRE protocol, the limits of the resulting opinion, and the records that matter during review.
