A quick trip to Sarasota in a Charlotte County government-issued car cost a mosquito sprayer his job over the weekend.

But Steven A. says driving over county lines was only the beginning.

“Florida Highway Patrol pulled me over. I had two full bottles of beer unopened in the car, and as soon as I saw the police, I poured them out,” Steven said.

The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Department says they assisted FHP on the traffic stop and they can confirm that Steven was pulled over on Saturday, but no citation was given, not even a warning.
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If you are thinking about drinking alcohol and then driving this holiday weekend, be aware that sheriff’s deputies in Manatee County will be on what they call a “DUI saturation patrol.”

From 5:30 p.m. Friday to 3 a.m. Saturday, 12 deputies will join Florida Highway Patrol troopers on roads with histories of drunken driving-related accidents.

Deputies say the average DUI driver gets behind the wheel drunk every four to five days.

So far this year, the Sheriff’s Office alone has made more than 200 DUI arrests in Manatee.

DUI arrests are a prime way for any police department to pay cop’s salaries, so moves of this nature are not uncommon. However, police cannot pull you over if you haven’t violated the law. If, for whatever reason, you are drinking and driving, be sure to be safe and abide by all traffic laws.

Have you been charged with DUI somewhere in Florida? If so, contact a Sarasota DUI attorney at our firm to discuss your legal defense options.

Source

What is an absorption rate and how does it relate to my DUI defense?

The rate at which consumed alcohol finds its way into the blood stream. While alcohol sits in the stomach, its absorption is delayed. Absorption rate will be affected by how much was eaten, individual biologic differences, and what type of beverage was consumed. When drinking continues over a course of hours, both absorption and “burnoff” (metabolizing of alcohol) will be happening simultaneously.

An absorption rate is so important in many DUI defenses because of the time lapse in between the suspect being pulled over and submitting to a chemical test. Oftentimes, a suspect’s BAC, blood alcohol concentration, will be below the legal limit when they are initially pulled over, but will rise to past the legal limit by the time he or she submits to a blood, breath or urine test.

If you would like to discuss your unique legal defense with a Sarasota DUI lawyer at Musca Law, call 941-916-3627 or fill out the contact form on the right of this page.

The contentious dispute over the reliability of the Intoxilyzer 8000 may decided soon. In the DUI trial of Felicia B., testimony will center around whether prosecutors may introduce breath test results into evidence without calling an expert to testify as to machine’s reliability to accurately measure a driver’s BAC level.

If the court rules in favor of prosecutors, they could ask juries to presume a driver was legally drunk based on breath test results alone. This would be a powerful weapon in DUI cases. Without this authority, prosecutors would have a difficult time proving impairment without expert witness testimony; thus making it harder to get DUI pleas. Currently, prosecutors must bring in an expert before introducing test results in court; a practice that costs $1000 per day.
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Corporate lawyer Edward Guedes seemed downright pained in his guest column on May 24.

Guedes expressed dismay at the way the Herald-Tribune besmirched his client in stories by reporter Todd Ruger, and in an editorial and in one of my columns, too.

We gave a wrong impression, Guedes claimed, by falsely insinuating that decisions by CMI, the company that created and sells the Intoxilyzer 8000 breath-alcohol testing machine used by police in Florida, led to hundreds of local DUI cases being dropped or negotiated into lesser charges.

“The article by Todd Ruger insinuates that CMI’s alleged efforts to prevent the disclosure of the Intoxilyzer source code have resulted in the state’s dropping criminal charges … ” Guedes wrote. “This insinuation, however, is founded on a series of mistaken assumptions regarding CMI.”

Actually, Mr. Guedes, it was no insinuation. It was fact, and I’ll say it again: CMI’s attempts to keep its source code secret helped defense attorneys in numerous DUI cases in Sarasota and Manatee counties and elsewhere, and led to dropped cases and reduced charges. Pretending otherwise is silly. And I was about to tell Mr. Guedes so in a phone call this week when he surprised me by seeming to deny saying what he said.
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Prosecutors found a way this week to get around a legal dispute over the Intoxilyzer 8000, and once again were allowed to use an alcohol breath-test in a Sarasota DUI trial.

But along the way they discovered two things: the legal workaround will be expensive, and it may not always work.

The State Attorney’s Office spent at least $2,400 to bring an alcohol breath-test expert from Georgia to testify at the two-day DUI trial of a Sarasota waitress that the breath machine is valid.

The expert testimony allowed prosecutors to introduce the Intoxilyzer 8000 results of Felicia B’s breath test to the jury.

But bringing in an expert also gave defense attorneys a chance to raise doubts about the Intoxilyzer 8000. And in the end, the jury acquitted Felicia — even though the machine tested her breath-alcohol level at .10, over the .08 threshhold at which Florida considers a driver intoxicated.

While prosecutors now should be able to use the same expert to bring Intoxilyzer 8000 results into evidence in other DUI trials, Felicia’s case shows prosecutor headaches are far from over.

Using breath-tests at trial will mean paying $1,200 a day for the testimony from the expert, who may not be available when judges want to try DUI cases.

Felicia’s defense attorneys peppered the expert about problems with the machine, including malfunctions within a month of her test in August 2010.

The most convincing evidence a defense attorney said, was the video of roadside sobriety tests that show Felicia performing them effectively.

“What you see on the video doesn’t match the test,” the attorney said.
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The head of a company that makes a downloadable application enabling users to pinpoint police drunken-driving checkpoints says his sales have doubled after efforts by four senators to restrict such apps.

Steve Croke, CEO of Fuzz Alert, also said he might remove the checkpoint locating capability to prove that the app is not designed to help people drive drunk.

“It’s like an electrical version of the warning signs you see for curves ahead and so forth,” said Croke, 42. “This is nothing but a warning device, to let people know that they potentially are in an area where you should watch your speed.”

A USA TODAY story in March noted the growing popularity of apps that allow drivers to pinpoint such police enforcement tools as red-light and speeding cameras, speed traps and sobriety checkpoints. Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York, Harry Reid of Nevada, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Tom Udall of New Mexico asked smartphone makers Apple, Google and Research in Motion to quit selling apps that allow drivers to locate checkpoints, or to disable that function. Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, agreed.
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Jane Doe’s 11th DUI arrest made her one of the area’s most infamous repeat drunken drivers, but prosecutors dropped the case against her last week amid a battle over the state’s alcohol breath-test machines.

Defense attorneys say the state dropped the case against the Manatee County woman in a last-ditch effort to protect the Intoxilyzer 8000 breath test as a key tool in prosecuting hundreds of other DUI cases in Sarasota and Manatee.

Rather than allow a judge to issue a written order that could be used to throw out all breath evidence in local DUI cases, State Attorney Earl Moreland’s office dropped the charges on Doe — despite having video and officer testimony of her erratic driving and her failure on roadside sobriety tests.

“I realized its implications on other cases,” said Assistant State Attorney Brian Iten, a felony division chief.
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