Last week my client received a not guilty jury verdict on a DUI; client was traveling 89 mph in a 55mph on a motorcycle; although his speech was not slurred and his walk was normal; the officer said he smelled alcohol on my client’s breath, and my client “failed the 3 standard field tests; client refused all breath tests. At trial I was able to show that the field sobriety tests should be invalid because the officer failed to administer them according to his training. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty in 30 minutes, and later told me that without my cross exam of the officer, they would have convicted my client. There are several lessons from this case: (more…)

Robert Keefer Dell walked into a convenience store in Canton Georgia to purchase a six-pack of Michelob beer. Sales of alcoholic beverages are not allowed on Sunday though that did not stop Dell from ripping the neon orange tape stretched across the coolers and grabbing the beer. (more…)

Once your teenager drives away, there is nothing you can do to prevent that teen from doing something stupid with their car; you can, however, train the teen to be a safer driver by: (more…)

If you don’t think we live in scary times, consider the following: This news story comes from Boise, Idaho: “When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he’ll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver’s arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.
”I was looking at people’s arms and hands, thinking, ‘I could draw from that,”’ Dowell said.
It’s all part of training he and a select cadre of officers in Idaho and Texas have received in recent months to draw blood from those suspected of drunken or drugged driving. The federal program’s aim is to determine if blood draws by cops can be an effective tool against drunk drivers and aid in their prosecution.
If the results seem promising after a year or two, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police nationwide to undergo similar training. (more…)

The last reflection is on accepting the difficulty of life. For some of us, simply not accepting that life has its difficulties, its ups and downs, it heartaches, causes us more suffering. (more…)

In most states, if somebody is texting behind the wheel and causes a crash that injures or kills someone, the penalty can be as light as a fine. Apparently the State of Utah takes a much tougher stance on texting while driving. (more…)

From Mary MacMurray, one of the leading experts on breath testing devices in the nation: “The misinformation generated and distributed on what IS a 0.08 is something I would love to see the newspapers pick up on. In my opinion, the lower limit has simply increased the number of violators on the road and done little to make the roads safer.

1) The commercials showing trashed, obvious drunks are misleading because rarely do you find 0.08s that look that drunk or act that trashed. The general public is being misled into thinking that at a 0.08 you are drunk/wasted. A 0.08 is an arbitrary number that was chosen because it is an alcohol level where the probability of accident involvement begins to increase exponentially. It is not a level where most people feel or look drunk.

2) Just because a beverage is in a single vessle it is not necessarily a “drink”. Shorties/airline bottles for example are 50 mls and a fluid ounce is about 30 mls. Mixed drinks can contain several fluid ounces of alcohol. Specialty beers can have very high alcohol contents… Sam Adams Triple Bock is the alcohol content of 3 beers in a 12 ounce bottle. Pints of beer are 16 fluid ounces whereas bottles are 7, 12, 16 or 22 fluid ounces…. unless you get one of those new “bottles” that are metal which I am still trying to figure out what volumes they all come in. The one I saw looked like a 12 ounce bottle but was 15 fluid ounces. Knowing how much alcohol is in a beverage is necessary to determine how much it is contributing to an alcohol concentration.

3) The alcohol charts and wheels all claim that on the average you eliminate a drink an hour. FALSE, as a small female that would mean I am getting rid of a whopping 0.04 and hour compared to a 190 lb male eliminating a 0.02 per hour. Males 190 lbs and larger will get rid of about 1 fl.oz of 100 proof an hour, the rest of us have to wait longer.

4) The general population has no clue what it takes to reach a 0.08 and because all the anti-drinking/ driving commercials and such portray drunks people are mislead into thinking a 0.08 is drunk. This misconception results in otherwise responsible individuals being arrested at or near that 0.08 level who do not look, act or feel drunk but according to the law are over the limit. Would they have not driven if they knew that a 0.08 is not drunk but may be just “feeling good”?

Another line of comment I have is that while lowering the limit to 0.08 I am not aware of ANY states improving the quality of their testing and protocols to keep the level of science being applied at the highest standards possible. Why did we get a federally imposed 0.08 but no federal minimums as to what must be done scientifically in obtaining the test results? Single sample states still exist. States that do not believe in running calibration standards at the time of testing still exist. Should a person who was arrested and tested in a state like Nebraska or Iowa (single breath; no cal and unscientific guidelines for testing and maintenance of the equipment) be counted as having a prior in a state like Alabama where they quantify each sample with fuel cell and infrared; adjust for the temperature of the sample if it is above 34C and also check the accuracy of the machine at a 0.02 and a 0.08 as part of each test?

In Canada, when the 0.08 limit was imposed they also imposed minimum standards for the testing protocols that must be met in all provinces. The provinces can go above and beyond what is required, but at a minimum there are certain things that must be done. And in Canada, they do recognize that minimum guidelines of a single breath are not scientific and do not assure reliability. Unlike here, law enforcement did not own or control the breath testing… their scientists were the ones who consulted with the rulemakers. (From what I have seen in the past 3 years this is changing as the RCMP is becoming more and more like our cops stateside.)

A last point I like making on the 0.08 laws is that the penalties are much greater than people realize. Hidden consequences such as increased insurance, denial or loss of jobs (even though the alcohol consumption had nothing to do with you at work), expulsion from college (Colgate College kicks you out simply for being arrested, doesn’t matter if you are convicted since you have already been expelled) are all among the hidden consequences. The arrest/convictions stay on your DL essentially forever so getting arrested at 21 will still haunt you at 41. And in most states, there is no way to get this off of your record. You will pay for it the rest of your life. A hidden consequence that I had only discovered two years ago is you could also loose the dog you raised from a pup. My now 14 year old german shephard was in the truck when his owner got popped as a repeat offender. The owner went to jail and then on to prison as a repeater. One of the two dogs in the truck was executed at the animal shelter and the other was saved by german shephard rescue and sent to me since I take the real old dogs. The guy who raised Dexter was never told where his animals ended up and I only learned about Dexter’s owner’s history by making an effort to find out why Dex was homeless.”

Well said, Mary!

The third contemplation asks us to stop and think a minute about the consequences of our actions. If we really investigate we can see that our thoughts, speech and actions can lead us to positive or happy results, or they can lead us to negative or sad results. This seems all very simple but how often do we pause from “automatic” and really review our actions and their effect on our lives and the lives of others.