Cousin/friend's DUI case....This sounds kinda fucked up to me....
 

I know we're not lawyers here...but , i'd be interested to hear your guy's opinions. My cousin who is 20 got charged with physical control of a vehicle while under the influence. Basically means you COULD have driven, but penalties are same as DUI...Here is what happened according to him and it seems to check out more than fine with the police report:


- He is 20 years old
- Night before he drank 15-19 drinks between the hours of 3:30pm and 1am (not a normal occurance)
- Spent the night where he was hanging out
- Woke up at 6:15am the next morning and decided to drive home. Its about 1 mi to his home from where he spent the night
- Car's clutch went out on the way home. Pullled over. Called triple A to come tow his vehical which is now documented as being undriveable.
- While waiting he fell asleep. The car was on but sitting in park, couldnt move. A neighbor woke him up and asked what he was doing. He explained the situation
- That neighbor called the cops and said he looked out of it (he had just woken up)
- Cops came, car was off. Keys in ignition. Car not 100% legally parked because it couldnt be moved
- Police perform field sobriety test
- He made 2 small mistakes from being nervous. Both were in not fully following directions. But no stumbling or anything of that nature. He thought considering what time it was and that he just had woken up pretty much that it went fairly well
- This test is on tape
- He was arrested at this time for physical control.
- Kept in jail cell for a little under an hour
- At 8am he's asked to do breathalyzer. he asked to speak with an attorney. he speaks with one and decide to blow
- Either the machine was broken or cop didn't know how to work it. But he did not get a registered result. They have since had a court hearing and it is NOT being considered a refusal. So there is NO BAC in the case. Thus the Department of licensing part of the case has been thrown out. Only the criminal part remains...

- He was charged with physical control
- Police officer punched his license (This is unlawful to do without a BAC)



Seemed pretty messed up to me cuz

1) The car cant even run
2) There is no BAC
3) Unlawful punching of card



Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? He's got a good attorney but the whole thing seems sort of dumb. He did the right thing by sleeping it off...maybe should have slept another couple hours but come on

But you admitted he drove drunk until the car died. So quit trying to get out of it, be a man, and take the penalty.

A lot of it depends on the state. IN Florida for instance, the physical control of the vehicle is enough to arrest for the DUI. Also they do not need to blow. They have the roadsides. His best bet, it to hire an attorney, and fight the entire thing. If he looks good on the video, and them having no BAC then he hase at least a 55% chance of winning. Remember that the judge will take the cops side. The other thing on his favor, is the have a mechanic certify that the car was undrivable.

drunk drivers should never get the technicality in thier favor, like when you were a kid, ties goes to the runner in baseball. :2 cents:

What he did was completely stupid, he was still impaired. You don't sleep off 15 drinks in 6 hours.

That being said, tell him to get a decent lawyer.

This reply is for a couple of you. You guys seem to be convinced he was still drunk. Kassidy your math is WAY off...


He started drinking at 3:30pm...and it sounds like the larger amounts were done at the begining.

So no 6 hours.....15 hours to burn off alcohol when he drove.....17 hours when he blew.


I'm sorry but i think he did the right thing by sleeping it off and NOT driving home drunk

Here in washington there are two different charges...DUI and Physical Control...Both have same penalty though. So there will be no DUI here, only physical control, he's already been charged formally.

I dont know if you're american or not....But where i come from, innocent UNTIL proven guilty....Nomatter what the crime is...ties and anything close to ties go to the defendant and always will. Otherwise you could go to jail for any he said she said type of case....would you like it if just anyone could go to the cops and said you killed someone? Its a tie, so you lose!

Give me a break

officer should of done a breathalyzer directly after he failed physical tests
without that he'll probably get off because the officer fucked up
just so you know, after 6 hours im sure he still had something in his system which would return the same result being underage.

its 17 hours since the time of drinking begining. 7 hours since he stopped...the drinks from the begining of the day have been metabolized and those 7 hours burn off excess drinks that havent been metabolized. I've heard anywhere from 2/3rd's of a drink per hour to 1 per hour give or take.. He's a good size guy at 200 lbs as well.....any way you put it... its 17 hours of burning off alcohol when he tried to give the breath test. He very well may have been at a 0.0....But at the very worst i see him being no more guilty than someone who has a beer or 2 at the ball game and drives home at a .05 or whatever. He's 21 in like 2 months....so in reality he could only blow a .02 here....but it seems like this is the court of public opinion and you guys wouldn't rip into someone driving home after a glass of wine at a dinner party...or maybe you would?

One more thing...on the police report...after doing the field sobriety....his motor skills were checked as "fair" i think it goes Good, Fair, Poor, bad.......FUCKING WASTED :)

the point is he's underage meaning .02 = dui

first off you said he is 20. So are you not in the US because he should have been given an MIP. If you are outside the US, then it is hard to say. It sounds a little fishey to me though. He called AAA when the card died, then you say he fell asleep with the car running while he was waiting? Why would he leave the car running, unless it was cold and he wanted heat? But in the end if all they have the taped FST and no breathalizer and he did okay on the FST with a lawyer he should be okay.

But tell him next time to sleep more than 5 hours before he drives after a night of drinking. Even if he drank these 15-19 drinks over the course of 10 hours that is a lot of booze and no matter what he says he was most likely pretty fucked up at some point during that night.

okay, thats fine...But who's to say he wasn't at 0.0 ? He wanted to do the breathalyzer and the cop couldnt get it to work. Mathematically after 17 hours its more than possible that a 0.0 would have been the result.

AND on top of all of this...its a null point because there is NO BAC IN THE CASE...

And in regards to the .02 comment as well...A lot of people in this thread seem to be in the court of public opinion , saying he was DRUNK when he drove home.....when .05 as a society we do not call DRUNK, or too drunk to drive....



I mean, come on guys. Put yourself in his shoes. You know you drank a lot so instead of trying to drive home...you decide to sleep it off to do the right thing. You wake up in the morning and decide to drive home which is basically down the street practically. On the way your car breaks down, while waiting for tow truck the cops come, you feel like the field tests go fine...the cops write down that your motor skills are fair....you get arrested in front of people you know in your neighborhood...made to sit in a cell for a while...you want to give a breath test and they cant figure out the machine...so with basically no evidence they still charge you and its gonna set you back 10 grand and you're a college student already trying to pay your way through schoool?

I think this is real shitty for him and not a fair shake...And coming from this fine group of individuals on GFY who NEVER drink :winkwink:

yes, morning in seattle are cold and damp...thats the reason for the car being on....

As far as an MIP, no proof of alcohol. None present, none able to be detected due to no BAC...


You are right in one respect...thats a lot of drinking...but those of us who had some crazy college times probably matched that over the course of a day if not more when you factor in tailgate, football game, post party, party night....i mean, i think most of u s have been there....but yeah, i'm sure he was FUCKED UP...but it was in a house, and no driving was done that night, and he spent the night at that house to be safe....

But i DO NOT think its a known fact that he had alcohol still imparing his abilities...There is an equal chance in both ways i think. And seeing as YES , we are in USA....its innocent til proven guilty...and there is nothing here saying that he had alcohol in him, with him...however you wanna put it

ugh! i didnt say he was drunk, i said he'd get a dui. if he had .02 he'd automaticly get a dui not because he was drunk but because he's underage. i dont understand why you cant get that. the fact is we dont know what he would of tested and its impossible to say now. this may or may not help him in court, but if they do find out he was drinking for long period of time listed here, it certainly wont help his cause.

btw, if you have your keys in the ignition listing to the radio you can get a dui even if the car is parked and not running :2 cents:

Exactly. If you are going to crash somewhere toss the keys out of sight and sleep on the passenger side.

I got a dui story too

I have one beer at dinner.
We have a graduated license system here, where u first get your learners, then a novice, then full license.
I got my novice, and had been able to get my full for like 2 years and i get pulled over because my buddy was out taking a piss on a tree in a park.
They breathlize me, i blow 0.01. yes, 1/8th the legal limit,
they impound my car and give me a suspension.
They woudlnt' let me park the car legally because "i was too intoxicated" according to the cop.

.01 is what in a 230lb guy? a quarter of a beer? YES OCIFER IM FCKING TANK!!

The terms of my novice license are no alcohol in system at all...

I've done my share of drinking and never drive, always sleep where I am or have a designated driver if we are going out. So I commend him on sleeping there instead of trying to drive home at 1am. Here is a cool little site. http://www.intox.com/wheel/drinkwheel.asp you can put in how many drinks you had over what period of time and how much you weigh and it will estimate your BAC. So if you he had 17 drinks ( not sure what he was drinking so I just put in screwdrivers it would change if it was light beer or something like straight shots ) and I put in 15 hours from 3pm to 6am the time he started drinking until the time he woke up and went home and put in 200lbs ( I have no idea what the guys size was so I just put that in. according to this thing he would be a .095. You can change it up a little bit and say he had those drinks from 3:30 to 1am so about 10 hours then slept for 5 hours. This bumps him up to a .182 when he went to bed. according to this http://www.selfcounseling.com/help/a...tozerobac.html it would take him a lot longer than 5 hours to sleep this off.

I'm not saying he was drunk when he drove. He is the only person who knows if this is true or not. to me, it sounds like he got lucky that there is no BAC here because I have a feeling it might not have been good for him.

However, to blame this on anyone but him is wrong. Sure he is a student and this is probably going to cost him some cash and if he gets convicted it's going to suck, but here is the deal. If the cop shows up he tests your friend and suspects he is impaired he has to arrest him. If he lets him go and the guy drives down the steet and kills someone the cop can be held liable. Now in your friends case the car was broke down so he couldn't just drive off, but the cop couldn't be sure of it.

hopefully it works out okay for him and more importantly I hope he has learned a lesson. If he is going to drink that much, plan on sleeping more than 5 hours before driving home.

I used these calculators...he was drinking a light bear that is 4.1% . The most i've gotten one of those calc's to say was .041999% for him but some say 0.000

.123 is what it comes to when he went to bed if you use the correct type of alcohol . It was about 5.5 hours before he drove (He lives by UW and it was a UW party..probably should have walked but it was well under a mile from the sounds of it) so the car broke down, he called, was waiting, talked to neighbor...cops come in a few minutes by l ike 7am...so not much time has elapsed here...


So by your chart...he should have burned off 6 additional drinks while he was sleeping.... That puts him at right smack at .02 when he started driving, as low as .01 when they gave him field sobriety...and a full hour or more into complete soberness when he tried to blow...

Thank you for proving my point :thumbsup

Another way of doing it is just put 17 drinks into the calc and 16.5 hours for the time....this puts him at .01-.015 ..tough to say cuz it only lets me put it 16 hours...16 hours is .018 though, under even HIS legal limit



OR

consult your little handy chart there...

It doesn't go as high on the hours as we have here...so we'll just say 15 hours....in 15 hours that chart claims you burn off 17 drinks....so once again....that puts him at 0.0


Thank you for these tools...maybe i should have him use these in court! :thumbsup

Just thought i'd see what the night shift thinks of this...

Its just really got me peeved...

hotdog bikini :thumbsup

Fucked up laws.same here though if the keys are in the ignition you are fucked..Hopefully a lawyer might get him off

Without a BAC? ..and as you can see up above...mathmatically he should have been fine...

...thought i'd give an update for everyone who was participating in this thread a while back...


My cousin plead down to Neglegent Driving 1st degree today. No mandatory stuff other than an alcohol class. He has it on his record though which stinks...i kinda was on his side on this one...but i guess in the end its a slap on the wrist...just hope he stays outta trouble on his 21st birthday in 2 months :1orglaugh