Judge Thomas Dannheisser adjudicated John Doe, 49, of the 1000 block of Bushwood Drive in Cantonment guilty when he sentenced her Tuesday.

Doe showed a blood-alcohol content of 0.176 percent and 0.178 percent after two Intoxilyzer tests on the day of her arrest, according to an Escambia County Sheriff’s Office report. The legal threshold for drunken driving in Florida is 0.08.

Doe is principal of Hallmark Elementary and Allie Yniestra Elementary. The two schools and Spencer Bibbs Elementary School will merge this fall to form a new school that Doe has been asked to lead.

The $17 million school, which will house about 800 students, is set to open this fall.

The judge also suspended Doe driver’s licence for 12 months when he sentenced her after her plea Tuesday. Dannheisser ordered that Doe’s vehicle be impounded for 10 days and an ignition interlock be put on her vehicle for six months.

Doe has to perform 50 hours of community service, attend a first offender DUI school and go to a DUI impact panel. She will undergo random breath/urine testing and be evaluated to see if she needs to get substance abuse treatment.

She can’t possess or drink alcohol while on probation. Doe also can’t possess a control substance without a prescription.

Doe was arrested after Escambia deputy Caleb Odom stopped the Nissan Pathfinder that she was driving on U.S. 29, north of Nine Mile and 9½ Mile roads.

The deputy stopped Doe after a motorist reported that she was behind a possibly intoxicated driver who was driving north on Interstate 110 toward Brent Lane.

The motorist said the driver was “driving erratically and swerving on and off the road,” according to the Sheriff’s Office report. The Pathfinder exited the interstate on U.S. 29 and headed north.

Odom said he could smell alcohol on Doe, the report states.

Deputy Jason Comans helped with the traffic stop by having Doe perform three field sobriety tests.

Comans asked Doe whether she had been drinking before he administered the tests. She said she had three margarita drinks and a beer at Flounders restaurant on Pensacola Beach two to three hours prior to the stop, the report states.

After Doe performed poorly on the three field sobriety tests, she was taken to Escambia County Jail.

If you’ve been charged with DUI in Sarasota or elsewhere in Florida, it’s essential that you quickly contact a defense attorney for legal representation. Call 941-916-3627 now for your free consultation with a Sarasota DUI defense attorney at Musca Law.

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On a brighter note and in case you haven’t heard, a Sarasota native will be competing for the Lombardi trophy. A story about the Packer’s Sam Shields from today’s news:

A large Green Bay Packers flag hangs with pride outside a small home in the Newtown area of Sarasota.

Inside pictures and plaques tell the rest of the story.

It is the childhood home of Sam Shields III, 23, the Green Bay rookie cornerback whose interception against the Chicago Bears sealed the Packers’ Super Bowl bid in the final minutes of the NFC Championship game on Jan. 23.

“I saw the number (37) come across the field, and when I saw his hands go up and come together I knew he had the ball and that’s when I started jumping and hollering,” said his mother, Michelle.

During the game the Shields’ home on Leon Avenue was full of family and Michelle said that as she ran for the front door she grabbed hold of her cousin and they both started crying.

“I was here and the tears just came down,” said his father, Sam Jr., while sitting in the TV room in the back of the house.

“I didn’t really want him to be named after me because I’m the junior and he’s the III,” Sam Jr. said about the both of them having the same name. “I wanted to give him something of his own identity, but I did it anyway,”

Sam Jr. now chuckles at pictures of his only son in his childhood team colors, green and gold. A sign, Sam Jr., believes of things to come.

“Well, when Sam (III) was very small he was always running,” Sam Jr. said. “He never did like the Nintendos and the Gameboys. He was always an outside kind of person.”

Sam III excelled at Booker High and at the University of Miami, but said the NFL showed little interest. He went undrafted.

But then Green Bay called. Sam Jr. said it seemed the perfect fit: “The small town, the youth that was needed, the veterans that they had.” Sam III, who stands 5 feet, 11 inches, and weighs about 185 pounds, signed as a free agent with Green Bay on April 30.

Sam Jr. said that his son has “been making good decisions for a long time.”

And those good decisions started on the streets of Newtown, where life’s pitfalls can linger right outside the door in an area with a history of poverty, drugs and crime. Sam Jr. said his message to young men in the community is, “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up. A lot of things can happen. Just keep going and definitely put God in your life.”

Saturdays at the Shields’ house while Sam III was growing up was always about football. “I loved it, I loved it. I couldn’t wait until Friday and when Friday came I knew Saturday was coming and it was football time,” Michelle said.

But football has always followed faith and family. Sam III calls home after every game, even the NFC Championship.

Shields’ parents help take care of his 3-year-old daughter, but this week they will board a plane bound for Dallas, the site of Super Bowl XLV on Sunday.

The trip, they said, will be the first real vacation they have gone on together in about 30 years. Michelle has pledged to wear only green until the game.

Go Packers?

The state’s highest court said it will not consider past decisions that essentially halted Sarasota and Manatee county prosecutors from using alcohol breath-test results during DUI trials over the past few years.

Local prosecutors were hoping for a high court reversal because in recent years they have had to reduce charges or abandon hundreds of DUI cases where the breath tests were the most compelling evidence.

The company that makes the Intoxilyzer 8000, Kentucky-based CMI, also hoped the high court would overturn a 2nd District Court of Appeal ruling on a Sarasota case that required the firm to give DUI defendants and their attorneys information about how the machine works.

CMI has refused to comply with past subpoenas for the Intoxilyzer 8000′s computer code, allowing defense attorneys an avenue to attack the machine’s admissibility.

On Wednesday, the Florida Supreme Court handed a final blow to CMI, which now faces a choice: Either give defense attorneys the machine’s code, or risk more attacks on its product, the only machine approved for use in Florida.

Judges in Sarasota and Manatee counties have ruled that defendants have the right to examine the evidence against them, including the computer code inside the Intoxilyzer 8000. The 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld that ruling in June for defendants who want to make sure the machine being used to convict them is the same one the state has approved.

Manufacturer CMI says the code is a trade secret and has so far refused to comply with the subpoenas.

The Florida Supreme Court declined on Wednesday to accept CMI’s appeal, ending any hope of avoiding the subpoena. CMI and its attorney did not return calls for comment on the company’s next move.

Prosecutors in Sarasota county say the breath tests are still usable and reliable — with a legal workaround. But that involves a cost of $1,000 a case to fly in an expert and requires more time for each trial, said Assistant State Attorney Erica Arend.

“In the end, we still get there; it’s just more time-consuming and expensive to do it,” Arend said. For now, the state has yet to use that method because defendants have been pleading out before trial, she said.

Breath-test results are a key piece of evidence in DUI cases, but even in cases where the results are not usable, prosecutors can still try to prove the case using testimony from law enforcement officers who administer field sobriety tests.

Law enforcement agencies in Sarasota and Manatee counties have continued to use the Intoxilyzer 8000 as a way to back up their other evidence of driver impairment. They do not have an alternative machine to use when combating drunk drivers because the Intoxilyzer 8000 is the only breath-test machine approved for use in Florida.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says the Intoxilyzer 8000 is accurate, and there are no plans to change to a different machine at this point.

The department did not comment on the latest Supreme Court ruling.

FDLE rolled out the new Intoxilyzer 8000 in 2007, a breath test machine touted as the answer to defense attorneys’ relentless attacks on the reliability of an older model.

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Tampa police say the 34-year-old male was driving on the trolley tracks Saturday night when he ran his sport utility vehicle into an oncoming trolley.

Officers reported the DUI suspect recorded a blood-alcohol level of 0.217 and 0.214 percent. State law considers a person impaired at 0.08. He was arrested and charged with suspicion of DUI and failure to drive on a designated roadway. He was released Sunday on $500 bail.

The trolley was carrying four passengers and the operator, but no injuries were reported. Little damage was done to the trolley, and it was working again a short time later.

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