Michael H.’s DUI arrest was a bit quirky, yet still seemed like a strong case for the Manatee County Sheriff’s deputy who arrested him.

Michael had run out of gas on July 3, 2010, and was pushing his car through the intersection of University Parkway and Whitfield Avenue when the Manatee deputy stopped him. Michael smelled of alcohol, he admitted drinking several large beers and his blood-alcohol level tested at .12, over the .08 limit that Florida law considers impairment.

But Michael’s defense attorney acted on a hunch and began examining maps and property records to find out exactly where the county line is and where the traffic stop was made.

Her discovery? University Parkway, once known as County Line Road, is not — as many motorists and mapmakers long believed – the clear dividing line between Sarasota and Manatee counties.
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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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