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Making Sense of What Happened During a DUI Stop

7 February 2019

Tracy Roberts

Figuring out how to respond to a DUI charge can be challenging work. It may be helpful, though, to work your way through the events that occurred in order to establish a defense. Here are some things that DUI attorneys will tell you to think about regarding your stop.

The Questions the Police Asked

Generally speaking, the cops ask questions during DUI stops for a handful of reasons. The primary reason is to see if you will slur your words while talking. Secondly, they may also be fishing for something that bolsters their case against you or provides reasonable suspicion that you've been driving while intoxicated.

Note some of the common questions that the police ask. Where are you coming from? Have you been drinking? Do you know how fast you were going? Do you know why I pulled you over?

The goal in each of these questions is to get a piece of information to justify further DUI stop procedures or to flat-out obtain an admission of guilt. More importantly, the fact that such questions were asked indicates the cops may have been trying to support an otherwise flimsy argument for a stop. For example, you might be asked about your speed because the police officer didn't get a clean reading of your speed from a radar gun.

How You Were Stopped

There are normally three ways folks are detained. The first and most common is that your car was spotted out on the road speeding or swerving. The second is a DUI checkpoint stop where the police are halting traffic. The third is that you were seen sitting or sleeping in your car, especially if it was at an hour when the bars were open or had recently closed. Each situation presents its issues for both DUI attorney services firms and the police.

Road stops often offer a lot of opportunities to pull police data during the discovery process. Items worth examining include radar gun readings, body and dash cam video, logs for equipment, and even officers' records.

Checkpoint cases are frequently challenged on constitutional grounds, such as whether the drivers being tested were, in fact, being randomly selected. This usually works in the form of selecting every third or fourth driver for a check.

Cases involving parked drivers can be tough. The best defense is that you were just sitting there long enough to justify police interest.

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