Articles Posted in Criminal Defense

Many people I talk to think a DUI is something any lawyer can handle.  As an experienced DUI specialist lawyer I can tell you that is not true.  I have many hours of specialized training that most lawyers do not have.  The following case is a good example of why a specialist is needed.

The case is State v. Soucy, 2012 ME 16. Mr. Soucy was speeding and was upset after a fight with his girlfriend.  He was stopped by police and given field sobriety tests.  He had balance troubles on the balance tests and the HGN test showed jerking of his eyes.  He was arrested and blew a 0.00 on the Intoxilyzer.  The cop asked him if he took medications and he told him he took oxycodone and hydrocodone.  Mr. Soucy told police he wasn’t impaired by drugs, just tired and sick with the flu.  They called in a Drug Recognition Technician to perform a DRE test.

A DRE test is a battery of tests and examinations.  The technician examines the subjects eyes, blood pressure, muscle tone, balance, temperature and and other things.  (There is a lot of doubt in the scientific world about the reliability of these tests, but that is for another blog.)  The test showed pinprick pupils, HGN, rigid muscles and bad balance.

Many people do not realize that a DUI or other misdemeanor conviction in the United States can bar you from entering Canada. Folks who head to Canada on vacation are sometimes turned away at the border because a member the family has a DUI conviction. People on business trips, or hunting and fishing trips face the same problem.

If you have a conviction for DUI, operating after license suspension, leaving the scene of an accident, dangerous driving or many other misdemeanor charges, you are “inadmissible” under Canadian immigration law. If that is your only criminal conviction in your life you are inadmissible for 10 years. After that you are deemed rehabilitated.

If you have two or more convictions you must apply for rehabilitation with the Canadian government. It is a pretty involved process that requires you to submit a lot of documents and a fee. Processing takes up to a year. You cannot apply for rehabilitation until five years after the last action flowing from the second conviction.

It is always surprising that so many people are stopped by the police and arrested for DUI when the  reason they were stopped in the first place had nothing to do with DUI. I think more DUI arrests result from vehicle defects then from weaving.

The Fourth Amendment says that the police cannot stop you anytime they feel like it. They have to have a reason to stop you. The amount of evidence police must have to stop you depends on the situation. There are two levels of evidence that justify a stop. These are Reasonable and Articulable Suspicion, and Probable Cause.

Reasonable and Articulable Suspicion is the amount of evidence necessary to justify a belief that a person might be violating the law. That belief must be reasonable in the circumstances and based on evidence to support that reason. The officer must be able to articulate that reason as the reason for the stop.  Also the reason for the stop must be related to the subsequent investigation. This means that the officer cannot just invent a reason as a pretext. The police cannot stop you on a mere hunch.

I posted a while ago about a new law the Aroostook County DA wanted to push through.  There were four very bad things in the law.

They wanted to make it illegal to drive if you were taking any prescription medication. Not just drugs that get you high, any prescription medication.  If you went to the doctor and he prescribed anything, the prosecutors were going to make it illegal for you to drive.

They were going to test for it with immunoassay tests – tests that give a lot of false positive results.