Arrested for DWI-Unwarranted Blood Tests-M.A.D.

never agree to the "field sobriety tests" , they are not required by law and you can't be arrested for refusing, they include such as walking a straight line, saying abc's backwards(something I can't do when I haven't had even 1 drink), or having the Officer apply the "eye test"(many prescribed drugs can cause a false positive for alcohol with this test. And the last reason to refuse SFST is because 99% of people will fail as it is up to the Officer to subjectively determine if you passed and he wouldn't even have requested it if he hadn't already made up his mind you were over .08. Also, unless u haven't had any drinks in the last 5 hours don't agree to a PBT as it is also not legally required, all that is legally required, if you are arrested and read your rights is a breath test at the station. But be aware that most States are now allowing unwarranted blood tests even if you refuse them. This is wrong, abuse of our rights to protect are bodies IMO and due to the nature of the test can expose us to various diseases, infection and are not 100% accurate to begin with. Even when a warrant is required it is likely nothing more than a formality and likely the Judge makes his decision only on the statements of the Officer(s) and you have no right to rebut.

How do you liberals and dems and M.A.D. fanatics like that? It could happen to you

 

I'm pretty darn sure, these things exist in every state, regardless of who's in charge.

 

Yes they do because the no tolerance .08 BAC was mandated by Fed. Gov. and if States didn't comply they lost Federal Funds as well as the law that you had to submit to a breath test at the Police Station or lose you license automatically.

But somehow they are getting around the law that you have a right to refuse and lose your license by now allowing either warranted or unwarranted blood tests. Several years ago they could do that if someone was injured by the "drunk driver" but it now appears that at least here in Texas Appeals courts are allowing "unwarranted blood tests". But as I said, warranted blood tests are a scam as the driver has no right to speak with the Judge or be represented by Counsel prior to the Judge issuing the warrant on the subjective statements of the Officer.

 

So then why did you feel the need to call out Liberals and Democrats?

 

I've got some much simpler advice. Don't drink and drive.

 

Because Clinton signed it into law and it is an over-reach on our rights, something I credit to Liberals and Dems

 

You have a date?

 

This is a (*)(*)(*)(*)ed good reason to stop paying FED income tax. Let the states tax a little heavvier and pay for roads and bridges themselves. Corruptionvwould be easier to deal with since you won't have to go to DC to deal with it.

 

Seems like it's a bit of a mess all round.

My own experience as a police officer with Australian legislation differs somewhat. In my state the two primary pieces of legislation prohibit the driver of a motor vehicle from driving that vehicle on a public road whilst under the influence of alcohol or a drug. That's the big one. Observations are obviously required for the offence to be made out. But the observations must show a physical impairment. Observations of driving behaviour are critical. Then once you speak to the driver you can investigate and observe to find out if the person is intoxicated or merely unwell or just sleepy. A smell of liquor (not 'alcohol') on the breath is a starters. In isolated areas of the state where there were no breath analysis apparatus (this is some time ago) the observations evidence was sufficient for a dui conviction.

The other offence is to drive with the prescribed concentration of alcohol in the blood. The limits are .05 and .08, the differences are for sentencing purposes. There is no reasonable cause required, any driver can be stopped for any reason and be required to be tested, in practice of course you usually have your attention drawn to someone's driving behaviour, unless they're working at an RBT setup, police have neither the time nor the inclination to rush around randomly testing people.

Field sobriety tests are not used here at all. If you stop someone you must have obs on their driving (for dui) and obs on their physical condition can follow, no need for the side of the road circus.

 

So I guess if you go out to dinner with family and are the driver you can't have even 1 alcoholic beverage or must walk to the Restaurant of Bar. Stupid, why not just make consumption of alcohol only legal in one's private residence then as the law is setting people up for failure. Right? Not saying prohibition but only that alcohol cannot be served at public establishments. Never going to happen because States make too much money taxing alcohol consumed at these establishments and alcohol is these establishments bread and butter. So instead arrest people who are clearly not "drunk" and the city, county, State and Fed make even more money. What a bunch of you know what.

 

Clinton Signs Law Mandating National Measure of Drunk Driving



July 7, 2008



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



By Christine Hall

Subscribe to RSS








(CNSNews.com) - President Clinton Monday signed into law a bill that for the first time sets a federal blood alcohol limit for drivers as the legal standard defining drunk driving. The bill gives states, which traditionally set such standards, until fiscal year 2004 to adopt .08 blood alcohol content (BAC) as the impaired driving standard or risk losing a total of 8 percent of their federal highway construction funds by 2007

Google if you want the exact date, Clinton signs .08 bac bill.

 

Or get someone else to drive or use public transport or a taxi. Frankly if you're incapable of going out for a meal with your family without having an alcoholic drink, drink-driving is the least of your problems.

Nobody is being "set up". You have a free choice whether to drink and a free choice whether to drive. Everybody should be perfectly clear that driving while under the influence of alcohol is illegal so if you choose to drink and drive then get caught, you only have yourself to blame.

That depends on your definition of "drunk". Just because someone isn't stumbling about and slurring their words doesn't mean their driving can't be impaired. Plenty of scientific studies have demonstrated that even relatively small amounts of alcohol impact driving ability. The impact may be relatively small but why take the risk? When you're going out for your family meal would you really want to increase, even a little bit, the risk of you killing them just so you can enjoy a drink with dinner?

 

I think that would be overkill. Anyone has the ability to decide if they're going to drink and drive. Once the decision is made then they're bound to accept the consequences.

 

I hate DUI laws!

They are unconstitutional. You can't arrest someone for being statistically more probable to commit a crime.

Their are people out there that shouldn't drive with no alcohol in their systems, and there are people I would be fine driving with after they have had 10 drinks.

Meanwhile if you do kill someone drinking and driving you get 6 years, what kind of sense does that make? We apparently have zero tolerance until you actually hurt someone.

These laws should be like robbery, and armed robbery. Drinking and driving should be a multiplier for committing illegal acts. It is illegal to drive recklessly, it is legal to drink, if you drive recklessly while drunk you should get slammed hard with a lengthy jail sentence.

This is the same as robbery laws. it is illegal to rob someone, it is legal to own a gun. It is a multiplier to rob someone with a gun!

 

But drink driving is a crime. It's a crime because it increases the risk of you causing a collision that could injure or kill people. It's the same kind of reason driving with bald tyres or with no lights at night are crimes. Most crimes are about the risk of serious consequence rather than it being guaranteed.

Rubbish! Nobody would be fine to drive after drinking 10 of any alcoholic drink. They might be lucky, they might be lucky a hundred times but they're fundamentally less able to safely control the vehicle. Claiming anyone can be safe driving drunk is a dangerous and immoral lie.

Armed robbery is a more serious crime because it's recognised that having a weapon increases the risk of someone being injured or killed. If you don't recognise that alcohol increases the risk when driving, you can't apply the same principal.

 

Patently the laws aren't unconstitutional.

I think Germany has a system where the law recognises the difference between what we might call "serious" criminal acts and those which are more of a regulatory nature. Killing someone while dui would be a serious crime, being over the pca when driving might be seen as a regulatory offence (but an offence nonetheless). It puts me in mind of the old Roman law ideas of mala in se (an innately evil, criminal act) and mala prohibita (a regulatory type offence)

Either way the laws are legally and morally valid.

 

The problem with this is that bald tires and driving without lights on equally impairs everyone's ability to drive.

Not rubbish, ever seen anyone drink a case and a half of beer in a night, or dink a half gallon of booze?

That is called tolerance.

That person is fine to drive after 10 drinks. If you drank a case and a half, or a half gallon of booze you would probably die.

Armed robbery is a more serious crime then killing someone with your car?

 

Not at all. A better driver would be able to compensate more than a poor driver for example. It's impossible to determine that on the fly though and regardless of the driver, those things will increase the risk to some extent but are easily avoided so they are reasonably prohibited. Driving under the influence of any measurable amount of alcohol is the same.

That simply isn't true. The effect may be reduced for that individual and my not be as apparent in their mannerism but it has been proven that alcohol can impact driving ability well before the driver is noticeably drunk.

Again though, since there is no easy way of determining that exact level of risk for any given individual but we know it can be very serious and drinking is entirely optional, it is perfectly reasonable to prohibit drink driving.

No, I meant armed robbery is more serious than unarmed robbery.

 

Sorry, but if you can't see something, or you lose traction, it effected everyone the same, their ability to recover maybe different, but the effect was the same.

Well thanks for telling me my own experiences through varying tolerances of alcohol aren't real!

i guess you are trying to convince other people, and not me, because you can't tell me what I have experienced in my own life is BS!

What happened to the idea that we would rather let 10 guitly men go, then jail 1 innocent man?

You people have all been worked into such a state of hysteria, that you have chosen to live on your knees in safety, over dieing on your feet with liberty!

You mean how killing someone, or actually driving recklessly is more serious then being over an arbitrary legal limit?

 

Just on the point of impairment and pca. I think the dui statutes which focus on impairment are fair enough. The pca level in those cases is irrelevant but it can be used to bolster the dui charge of course. Some years ago one of the psychology departments in one of our universities in my city suggested people take tests involving the use of hand-held computers which ran games which they had to play so that their impairment (or lack of it) would be able to be assessed. They thought it would be a usefu adjunct to police officer observations and the pca reading. I thought it was a great idea but it was never pursued by our legislators - too difficult I suppose.

On pimptight's point about tolerance, I agree. A seasoned drinker can be quite a ways over the pca level and yet have no obvious impairment. While that person could be convicted for pca they would not be convicted for dui if police couldn't prove an impairment. In a way this demonstrates to me the unfairness of having pca as an offence. If there is no impairment then the person is being prosecuted for having a particular level of alcohol in their blood. The computer tests would have been a better idea than having pca.

Again on that point, my first dui arrest took me my surprise. I was a very new probationer and working with an experienced partner mooching around in some back streets one night. A car was ahead of us, my partner told me to watch him. I didn't see a thing wrong but as the car kept driving slowly my partner pointed out the tendency for the driver to every now and again gently move to the right (in Australia we drive on the left side so the driver was tending towards the centre line just a little bit). Long story cut short, pulled him over, bloke in his late 60s, reeking of liquor. He blew .23 but his impairment wasn't that great, although it was sufficient for arrest and he pleaded guilty anyway, but the experience of my partner (who lost a neice and nephew to a drunk driver some years before) showed me that I needed to be more observant.

Impairment, yes, convict; a blood reading, because of the randomness of it I'm not convinced it's fair.

 

Do you have a link?

 

Yes, the ability to recover from a skid maybe different just as negative effect of alcohol on different people will vary. For every driver though, there is an increased risk, however small that might be. Because there is no easy way to measure and predict those variations and not always possible to identify the risk before it has had a critical consequence, it is necessary to have clear and simple rules and laws. Hence having bald tyres is an offence regardless and DUI is an offence regardless.

That could be seen as unfair on those whom the effect would be minimal but there is no practical alternative. The other advantage of clear and simple laws is that they're easy to obey so there should be no excuse or confusion on the matter.

Incidentally, you've not actually said how you believe the law should be changed.

I never said that variation isn't real. I fully agree that different people have different tolerances to the effect of alcohol. What I did say that regardless of an individuals tolerance, alcohol will still have a negative impact, however minimal.

My specific response about untruth referred to your suggestion that anyone would be OK to drive after ten drinks. Again, for some people the effect may be reduced but for everyone there will be an effect. Why would anyone want to take that risk?

If you drink and drive, you're not innocent. It is against the law and every driver should be perfectly clear on that fact. There is no excuse or justification for breaking that law. Just because you think the law shouldn't exist doesn't make it so.

Yes, some offences are more serious than other offences. That doesn't mean that we ignore all the less serious offences.

 

My alternative solution is that if you kill someone drinking and driving, that is 2nd degree murder, not a 6 year jail sentence.

That if you are driving recklessly, and drunk, that this is a 2 year jail sentence.

That any illegal act while drunk becomes a much more serious offense.

My solution is to punish people who actually break a law that hurt's someone, instead of undermining the integrity of law enforcement and the rule of law, by creating a arbitrary line people can't cross, and get slammed financially more then anything else for crossing!

 

Yep, that is CNS News, all right! "Fact checkers" to the MAX!

 

I can only speak for Florida.

You can be arrested for suspicion of DWI based solely on the officer's word. No field test or BAT is required.
If, upon arrest, you refuse the BAT your license is automatically suspended.
If you've been drinking refusal of the field test and BAT is a good idea. Your license will be suspended and you will spend the night in jail (depending on the county) but you're attorney should be able to get a partial lift for going to work, church, etc.
If you're involved in an accident in Florida you have no right to refuse a blood test.

While I don't agree with some of the enforcement protocols if you drink then get behind the wheel and get arrested you should be thankful. That's the best thing that can happen to you. The worst is getting away with it because you'll do it again. Every other possibility is just a matter of timing.