Bergen County Lawyer Stories - Nj Dwi Cases Defeated
Being arrested for a DWI is a horrendous experience
. Luckily, there might be some ways out.
Police officers don't always pull you over for the right reasons. While "right" and "wrong can be based in opinion, there are certain things that the average law enforcer can't pull you over for... And if they make these mistakes, cases can be thrown out.
Here's an interesting legal tidbit: DWI stops can't be "random". This means that the police can't just decide on any given Friday to put up a roadblock with some flairs and just start sniffing around inside the driver side window of any passing car. There actually has to be written notice of these stops, otherwise the stop itself is considered an invalid reason to pull you over, and you get out of trouble... as a defense attorney, this is obviously what I would want for my clients.
Every now and then, the police will try to find loopholes around these basic procedures, to catch more people doing things they shouldn't be doing. Here's an example:
Police can set up a seal-belt checkpoint, where they should theoretically be checking to make sure that the folks passing by are wearing their seat belts. In this case they should be looking into the car, checking for the belt, and if it's not fastened they can pull you over and give you a ticket.
They CAN'T just pull over every single person that passes by and strike up a random conversation. Like, "Hey you sound a little funny, how about saying the alphabet backwards while standing on one foot for as long as you possibly can?" The stop is only supposed to pertain to those not wearing seat belts.
If the police conduct this "seat-belt stop" as if it's a random DWI stop, they are cheating the system. Again, all DWI stops are supposed to be announced in a community publication.
Maybe this notification is necessary for traffic purposes; people in town should be notified about when they might want to take a different road to get home on a given night. Regardless, if they don't let you know, the stop is illegal.
We won such a case recently when a young girl was heading home from a Brad Paisley concert where she had been drinking. The legal limit in NJ for blood alcohol content is 0.08 percent. Most people who drink regularly don't really feel "drunk" at 0.08 percent, and their confidence in driving frequently get's them in trouble.
The same is not the case for anyone under the age of 21. If you drink ANYTHING before you are officially "of age" and it registers on a Breathalyzer, you are immediately guilty of an underage DWI. It doesn't matter how insanely low the number is, If you're not old enough for booze, you get the penalty.
Well, the young girl was pulled over and after speaking to her for a few minutes and after asking where she had come from etc., the police conducted a Breathalyzer and the girl was immediately arrested.
The one thing the girl was NOT issued was a seat-belt ticket. Since she was pulled over randomly while actually wearing a seat-belt, it's easy to see the purported reasoning had nothing to do her vehicles stoppage. Call it a DWI stop in disguise!
The fact that everyone was getting pulled over, whether or not they were wearing a seat belt, revealed that this was a veiled "DWI" checkpoint, and as a result of it's nondisclosure (it wasn't listed in the paper or announced in any form) every stop associated with this stop could have been completely thrown out.
When people get arrested, their lives get turned upside down, and fairly drastically. Imagine a 19 year-old girl stuck behind bars for hours not knowing the implications of her charge, if she'd have a blemish on her record, if she'd lose her license, or even if her parents would just completely freak out.
As a side-note, she was actually under the legal limit, but anything over 0.0 blood-alcohol content counts as a DWI for someone under the age of 21. This would have been an unfortunate break for a girl who might have only had a single drink.
Fortunately, these charges were dropped, though I'm sure the girl was still grounded like any other teenager in such a situation.
Whether or not we support teenagers drinking and driving doesn't matter. There are legal protocols that our police are expected to abide by. When the enforcers of our laws start taking their own liberties, it must be challenged to uphold the constitution.
by: Travis Tormey
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