A pair of recent United States Supreme Court cases expanded police powers during an initial DUI stop, and since legal fights at this stage were already hard to win, it might seem that challenging the state’s evidence immediately before and after the stop is now a waste of time. However, as outlined below, this is not necessarily the case. The relevant legal doctrine is called the fruit of the poisonous tree. In this instant, the “tree” is the stop and the “fruit” is the arrest. If a lawyer can prove that the tree was poisonous, the prosecutor cannot give the fruit to the jury, and the defendant wins as a matter of law.
Before the Stop
In December 2014, a near-unanimous Supreme Court handed down Heien v. North Carolina. A deputy sheriff in North Carolina pulled over a vehicle because it had only one working brake light, a mechanical defect that is against the law in almost every state except NC. The Justices ruled that the deputy sheriff made an understandable mistake when he pulled over the car for something that was not against the law, and the Court upheld the subsequent drug arrest and conviction.
Most DUI cases begin in the same way, with hyper technical infractions of the traffic code. Under the law, officers must have reasonably certain knowledge of a crime before pulling over a vehicle. The “crime” could literally be almost anything in the book, such as speeding one or two MPH above the limit or a having a license plate that is partially obscured by an oversized frame. Typically, the infraction occurs in the officer’s plain view.
What if the officer did not see the defendant speeding, but instead receives a tip from a third party? Most courts use a three-pronged analysis to determine a tip’s reliability:
- Source: Anonymous sources are usually the flimsiest ones because people who are not confident enough to give their names are likely passing on erroneous or biased information.
- Specificity: Did the caller give enough information so that officers could sufficiently identify the suspect vehicle, or did they simply guess right?
- Time: Tips become stale about as quickly as fruit from a poisonous tree, so anything older than a few minutes is probably unreliable.
Heien did not change the underlying law; it only prevented defense attorneys from playing armchair quarterback and second-guessing officers.
After the Stop
In 2016’s Utah v. Strieff, an officer detained an individual with little evidence, and the Court upheld the subsequent arrest. However, as it did in Heien, the majority never even mentioned the underlying law. So, in effect, Strieff may have given police officers enough rope to hang themselves because the decision to arrest must be at least somewhat evidence-based.
After the officer pulls over the defendant, the officer usually looks for signs of intoxication as a basis for administering field sobriety tests (FSTs) or a Breathalyzer test; the FSTs or breath tests then serve as the basis for arrest. These signs include:
- Erratic Driving: Many people drive slowly or make sudden turns because they are lost or looking for an address and not because they are intoxicated.
- Odor of Alcohol: If a person’s breath smells like alcohol, that only proves the person had been drinking. If the person’s clothes or car smell like alcohol, that only proves that the driver had been around someone who had been drinking.
- Bloodshot Eyes: Bloodshot eyes may be evidence of intoxication, alcohol consumption, fatigue, bad allergies, or a combination of some or all of these things.
At this stage, officers must point to specific facts that are evidence of intoxication, and Strieff did not change this law.
Count on Experienced Attorneys
Before they even think about a DUI arrest, officers must have evidence of wrongdoing and intoxication. For a confidential consultation with an experienced criminal law attorney in Schaumburg, contact Glasgow & Olsson.
(image courtesy of Echo Grid)