When a person is pulled over and the officer conducts a DUI investigation, he is looking for one main thing: evidence that you are impaired by alcohol or drugs. But, the officer has a number of disadvantages regarding the accuracy of his investigation. The first is that he is unaware of what your normal faculties [...]
A traditional DUI is the operation of a motor vehicle while impaired by alcohol or drugs. This is a relatively subjective assessment with no bright line rule. Determining whether you are “impaired” requires an assessment of your skills that is difficult to make and even harder to prove. The results of Field Sobriety Tests are [...]
Joshua Larson was charged with Driving Under the Influence in District Court in Missoula, Montana. He appealed his DUI/DWI conviction to the Montana Supreme Court, who affirmed the District Court. While making a traffic stop in Missoula, officers witnessed Larson squeal his tires through an intersection. One of the officers followed Larson, observed that he [...]
Under Montana DUI law, if you refuse to submit to an alcohol concentration test, your license is automatically suspended. A defendant whose license is suspended or revoked, may appeal to the district court in the county where the alleged DUI occurred. The appeal must be filed within 30 days of the revocation. At the hearing [...]
If an officer has stopped you (because he had a particularized suspicion) he will then watch for any indications that you are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Assuming that there are some indications, the officer will then perform a Preliminary Screening Test. These tests come in a number of different formats, and carry [...]
A New Hampshire man was arrested for DUI, but only convicted of a lesser offense because of his body type. Now many are questioning the validity of field sobriety tests. Jaimil Choudhry, 20, of North Hampton is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 230 pounds, which meets the clinical definition of obesity. While police [...]
Montana law prohibits one party from recording a conversation by use of a hidden electronic or mechanical device that reproduces a human conversation without the knowledge of all parties to the conversation. We Montanans take our privacy very seriously, and this is an excellent example of that (along with our constitutional right to privacy). But [...]
Field sobriety tests (FSTs) encompass several roadside tests used to determine whether a suspect is impaired by alcohol or drugs. They are often performed on DUI suspects to assist an officer make the decision whether to arrest the driver. In theory, these tests directly assess impairment by focusing on the skills needed to be a [...]
