Aggressive Defense of All DUI Matters
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539wAs a Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense attorney, I was concerned about a recent Boston Globe article’s discussion of blood alcohol measurement devices to be built in as standard features in new cars. I have written about this in the past, but this article provides new and alarming details.

The device would replace existing ignition interlock devices that are installed in the vehicles of people convicted of certain drunk driving charges. The existing devices require drivers to blow into a tube to have their blood-alcohol content (BAC) analyzed. If their BAC is too high, the car won’t start. The new device wouldn’t require the driver to do anything — it would automatically analyze ethanol in the moisture of the driver’s breath. Like the existing devices, the new one would prevent the car from starting if it detected a BAC above the legal limit.

QinetiQ North America, a Waltham defense contractor, is developing the device with $10 million in funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety (an auto manufacturers group), and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Congress is considering kicking in another $10 million to help defray the cost of installing the device in new cars.

Obviously, drunk driving is dangerous, and encouraging drivers to take responsibility for their actions and avoid driving when they’re impaired is entirely desirable. But while it may be well-intentioned, this project raises several different kinds of red flags for me as a Massachusetts OUI defense attorney. First, as I wrote last month, breathalyzers can register false positives because they detect ethanol that comes from sources other than alcohol. Is it fair to have a device like this prevent a driver with a completely clean driving record from starting his or her car after painting the house or eating bread — both of which can set off false positives on a breathalyzer? How would the device know whether ethanol came from the breath of a sober driver or a drunk passenger — would this device have the unintended consequence of discouraging designated drivers? How would drivers of disabled cars get home from wherever the car stranded them, especially in the many areas of Massachusetts and the country where public transportation is not widely available?

In addition, it often takes a while for new technologies to be completely vetted so that they work properly. Innocent drivers affected by a malfunctioning or oversensitive automatic breathalyzer could actually be harmed if, for example, the car is prevented from starting when they have an emergency and need to get to a hospital, or if they need to get to work. Would people avoid buying new cars once these devices became standard equipment, so that they could avoid these devices?

Perhaps fewer OUI charges would be made once these devices were in circulation. But no matter the circumstances, anyone charged with drunk driving should retain a Massachusetts drunk driving criminal defense lawyer to help ensure the best possible outcome for their case. Fines costing thousands of dollars, jail time, loss of license, skyrocketing insurance costs and possible loss of a job could all be consequences of a drunk driving conviction in Massachusetts.

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g0a000000000000000049c54056e7e593d4735f0ff9099af8c3e7866ad7As a Massachusetts OUI defense attorney, a recent news story caught my eye. The Salem News reported that a 57-year-old Danvers man was arrested for drunk driving for the eighth time and was held without bail after a dangerousness hearing. If convicted, this would represent a seventh DUI conviction for him, which would have serious, life-changing penalties like mandatory prison time and the lifetime loss of his driver’s license. Fortunately, he has a Massachusetts drunk driving attorney, who should look carefully at the evidence that police and the district attorney are presenting.

According to the police, on August 29, an anonymous caller told them that the driver of a Chevy Silverado truck was drunk and was headed to Merchant Liquors on High Street for more alcohol. Police set out to look for the truck and were unable to find it. Then Patrolman Scott Frost encountered Joel Grissom, 57, of Danvers, driving his Silverado at about 5 mph near his home around 1:30 in the afternoon. Frost said he observed Grissom stop his truck in the middle of the road and then take about two minutes to pull into the parking lot of his condominium complex. Frost said that Grissom smelled strongly of alcohol. There was an open, cold container of Budweiser in the truck, and Grissom was unable to stand without holding onto the truck’s door. Grissom allegedly said that he had been drinking. He failed a field sobriety test in which Frost told him to recite the alphabet. A breathalyzer test showed his blood alcohol content to be .33, well over the legal limit of .08. Grissom was arrested and charged with a fifth or subsequent OUI offense and with having an open container of alcohol.

After describing Grissom as “a high-functioning drunk,” Salem District Court Judge Richard Mori ordered him held without bail because Mori considered Grissom a danger to himself and others.

Read article: No bail for convict in many DUIs

As a Massachusetts drunk driving defense attorney, I am glad that this defendant has legal counsel to defend him from the very serious charges he faces. A fifth or subsequent OUI carries mandatory prison time, among other penalties. Grissom’s last two OUI convictions, in 2001 and 2002, were made before the “lifetime look back” law took effect, so he still had a valid license at the time of his August 29 arrest. But if convicted on the current charge, he would lose his license for the rest of his life. He would also pay fines up to $50,000, and face a mandatory two-year minimum jail sentence.

Even if Grissom is not convicted, the outcome of his dangerousness hearing already presents a hardship. Under Massachusetts law, judges can deny bail and keep drivers in jail until trial if they are charged with an OUI after having been convicted for drunk driving in the past three or more times. Such suspects may be kept in jail for up to 90 days before a trial must be held. Three months in jail awaiting trial is a long time, especially when it comes before any conviction. Even if the suspect is found innocent or the charges are dismissed, being kept in jail for 90 days could cause suspects to lose their jobs and other time-dependent commitments. If the suspect can’t work and earn money, he or she may not be able to keep up with rent or mortgage payments, and have nowhere to live by the time the 90 days are up. And what if there’s no one else to take care of their children or pets? If a suspect in this case is found not guilty or their charges are dismissed, being locked up for dangerousness still extracts a steep price.

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2822389247_4f98fbb27e_mThe next time you go out to dinner, be sure to drive carefully if you’ve eaten any bread products. You wouldn’t want to be stopped by the police with bread on your breath, since studies have shown that breathalyzer tests can’t tell the difference between the amount of alcohol in your blood and the ethyl alcohol that stays on your breath after you eat bread, yeast, or similar foods. Without drinking any alcoholic beverages at all, people who have eaten bread have gotten breathalyzer blood alcohol concentration readings as high as 0.05% — more than halfway to the legal limit at which you’re considered legally intoxicated. As a Massachusetts OUI defense lawyer, I think it’s important for people to know that the tests used to determine whether a driver is intoxicated are not foolproof. You can often — and should — fight OUI charges based on these faulty tests.

Nobody wants to see more drunk drivers on the road. But evidence shows that the breathalyzer test, on which law enforcement relies heavily, is not a good basis for determining who is driving drunk. I’ve written lately about the problems with field sobriety tests — basically, that they rely on faulty science that’s decades old. Blood-alcohol concentration tests also have problems because when they look for ethyl alcohol, which is the kind of alcohol people drink, they also can find similar substances that are not intoxicating, but still cause a false positive.

According to sociology professor David Hanson, the test doesn’t just pick up on food molecules, either — people who have been painting a wall can test as intoxicated without ever drinking any alcohol. Breathalyzer results can also show false readings because of “alcohol, blood or vomit in the subject’s mouth, electrical interference from cell phones and police radios, tobacco smoke, dirt, and moisture.” Tests of the subject’s actual blood, not their breath, produced accurate results in these investigations — but the breathalyzer could be amazingly inaccurate.

Field sobriety tests and breathalyzers make up two out of three of the usual sources of evidence in drunk driving cases — police officers’ personal observations being the third. Scientific evidence and common sense makes it clear that none of these are foolproof or even necessarily accurate — meaning that there’s a real problem with the way police determine which drivers are drunk. This makes it easier for me, as a Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense attorney, to get evidence against my clients thrown out and to achieve dismissals or not-guilty verdicts. But it’s unfair to my clients to be arrested and charged in the first place if it’s done on the basis of faulty evidence and unscientific tests. Some states, like South Dakota, recognize that breathalyzer tests are inaccurate and don’t allow them to be used as evidence; they allow only blood tests because they can rely on them to be accurate. But in Massachusetts and many other states, breath tests are used as evidence at trial, and there are even penalties for drivers who refuse to submit to them. Refusing the breathalyzer, even if you’re not intoxicated, results in suspension of your driver’s license for 180 days if you’re over 21. You can appeal that suspension, but it is an extra burden that may be inappropriate, given that the test is far from reliable.

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103769624_0a2f680106_mRecently, I wrote about a case in which parents were being charged under the social host law for their underage child’s party, which involved underage guests drinking alcohol. A new case in Cohasset shows how much of an impact the social host laws can have on a parent’s life. A woman whose underage son allegedly had a drinking party at her house has been subjected to the kinds of restrictions that we normally see for people who have been charged with a second or higher OUI offense. As a Massachusetts OUI criminal defense lawyer, I think it’s important for anyone with teenage children to be aware of how the social host law could affect them.

On a Saturday night during the first weekend in August, an eighteen year old, allegedly had 23 teenage friends over at the Cohasset home of his mother, age 50. A neighbor made a noise complaint to the police. Police officer John St. Ives came out to the home and reportedly heard people loudly chanting, “take off your shirt” and “we got your shirt off.” As St. Ives approached the back yard, he found people aged 17-19 sitting around a table drinking out of plastic cups, and beer cans all over the yard. The mother came out onto the deck while St. Ives questioned the teenagers. She claimed to have been at a friend’s house all night and to have been unaware that the kids were drinking alcohol, but was unable to supply the name of her friend. Two of her son’s friends told St. Ives that she had been home for 45 minutes and did know that they were drinking. Both the mother and son were arrested for disturbing the peace. The mother also faces charges of violating the social host law and keeping a disorderly house. The son and his 23 guests are charged with possessing alcohol as a minor.

Read article: Mother and son arrested because of underage drinking party

At their arraignment in Quincy District Court, both defendants pleaded not guilty and were released on personal recognizance. The judge scolded the mother for failing to supervise her son. They were ordered not to use alcohol or other drugs and to submit to random testing. Test results showing alcohol or drug use would be grounds to put them in jail for up to 60 days. The Probation Department will install a sobriety-testing device at the woman’s house as well. A probation surrender hearing will be held August 30 to determine whether this incident violates the terms of the woman’s probation from a May domestic violence case. In that incident, she was charged with two counts of assault and battery after going to her ex-husband’s home when she was intoxicated and attacking him with her shoe and punching him. If she is determined to have violated probation, she could go to jail.

In my view as a Massachusetts drunk driving defense attorney, it’s vitally important to recognize that Massachusetts’ social host law forbids adults to knowingly or intentionally provide alcohol to minors or to allow them to drink in their homes. The woman told police she didn’t know that the kids at her house were drinking. As a parent of an 18-year-old, it’s understandable that she may have thought she didn’t have to supervise her son and his friends, since her son is a legal adult in all respects except for drinking alcohol. Even if she heard them chanting “we got your shirt off” in the back yard, she may have just assumed they were being obnoxious, rather than that they were playing a drinking game like the police said.

Not paying attention to what teenagers are doing at your house, while perhaps inadvisable, is a far cry from knowingly and intentionally providing them with alcohol. The social host law may make sense for parents of kids under 18, over whom parents legally do have authority, but most parents of 18-21 year olds are trying to give their children the space to become adults and to live their own lives. Watching over them while they spend time with their friends is no way to do that. Anyone convicted of violating this law can be punished by a $2,000 fine or up to a year in prison, though, so the law forces parents to walk a difficult line between protecting themselves legally and encouraging their kids to become responsible adults.

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60444366_5a37e5396b_mThose of us who followed the progress of the Big Dig remember well the name Matthew Amorello, the former chair of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority who oversaw the massive construction project for four years. Amorello resigned from that post after a woman was killed when part of the roof of the Ted Williams Tunnel collapsed on her car. Now, Amorello faces charges for OUI and leaving the scene of an accident with property damage. Many Massachusetts residents don’t think fondly of Amorello, since he’s been associated in the public mind with the sky-high cost overruns, scandal, and tragedy of the Big Dig. But as a Massachusetts drunk driving defense attorney, I think it’s important to point out that like anyone else facing charges, Amorello is innocent until proven guilty, and he’s entitled to defend himself against the charges just like anyone else.

Amorello, 52, of Wenham, was arrested after allegedly hitting a 1999 Saab and a 2005 Dodge Magnum with his 1999 Ford Explorer. Haverhill police found Amorello in his Explorer, minus one wheel, in the parking lot of a Mercedes dealership. A Haverhill police officer said, “He was really out of it, and he didn’t know where he was.” Additional details about the arrest, like how the police determined that Amorello was intoxicated, were not available. Leanor Santos saw Amorello’s car hit hers. “All you could see was flames from the car as he was driving away,” she said. Amorello posted $40 bail and was scheduled to be arraigned at Haverhill District Court on August 9. However, he missed the court date because he was hospitalized at UMass Memorial Medical Center, his attorney told the judge. The article did not say why Amorello was hospitalized, but the attorney noted that Amorello was apparently unconscious when arrested.

Read article: Amorello arrested for OUI, property damage

It’s always a challenge for people charged with OUI to ensure that their rights are respected as they go through the legal process. It can be even more challenging for public figures who are associated with controversial issues unrelated to their OUI charges. As the Boston Herald reported, not only was Amorello in charge of the Mass Turnpike Authority during the fatal tunnel collapse, but prior to his resignation, he changed his department’s policy on sick leave so that when he left, he could receive $75,000 as compensation for his accrued but unused sick time. For that, he was fined $2,000 by the state ethics department. There’s no question that this raises serious ethical questions, but it’s important for the law to deal with Amorello’s alleged drunk driving and leaving the scene charges on their own, not in the context of unrelated accusations against him.

In my experience as a Massachusetts OUI criminal defense lawyer, people in Amorello’s position fare best when they work with a well-trained attorney who can ensure that their public image is kept separate from the charges that they actually face. There has already been some particularly nasty commentary about Amorello in the press, and his family has said that public criticism stemming from the Big Dig controversies has led to his personal struggles. Under these circumstances, it would not be a surprise if Amorello is feeling even more upset and unsettled than another person charged with OUI would be. That’s exactly why it’s best to hire a Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense attorney who can handle the case carefully. This can mean making sure that the arresting officer followed the law to the letter, that all the defendant’s rights are preserved, and that the outcome of the defense is as favorable as possible — either a dismissal of charges or a not guilty verdict.

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82371497_4ca567f813_mAs a Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense lawyer, I’ve noticed a worrisome trend in law enforcement and government more broadly toward charging people with driving under the influence of alcohol when they haven’t even been driving. Here in Massachusetts, law enforcement considers it “operating the vehicle” when the keys are in the ignition, even if the “driver” hasn’t turned on the car, put it in gear or released the parking brake. More extreme examples include a case in Wisconsin, in which a woman was arrested for DUI when she wasn’t even driving, because a police officer who passed by her in a convenience store thought he noticed an “odor of intoxicants” coming from either her or her friend. In another example, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for the widespread use of a technology that detects blood alcohol content and could alert law enforcement to arrest someone over the legal limit before they even drive.

Most people would agree that drunk driving is dangerous and prevention is a good idea. But from my perspective as a Massachusetts OUI criminal defense attorney, it’s also dangerous to arrest people on the assumption that they’re guilty until proven innocent. Yet that’s just what this trend of expanding the definition of drunk driving is moving toward. In doing so, it unfairly disrupts the lives of people who haven’t actually committed crimes.

In the Wisconsin example, Brittany Meye, 22, pulled into a gas station, where she and her passenger went into the convenience store. An officer watched her pull in, and when she and her friend passed by him, he said that he smelled intoxicants. He went to talk to Meye after she and her friend returned to their car, and arrested her for operating while intoxicated, second offense. Meye wisely moved to suppress evidence from the stop, since the officer had no reasonable suspicion for stopping her, and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals agreed, saying that no prior case involving drunk driving “has held that reasonable suspicion to seize a person on suspicion of drunk driving arises simply from smelling alcohol on a person who has alighted from a vehicle after it has stopped — and nothing else.”

Meanwhile, Senator Schumer is promoting a bill to fund research on alcohol detection devices that would use sensors in a vehicle’s steering wheel to measure blood alcohol content through a driver’s skin. I wrote about similar technology back in February. If the sensors determine that the driver was over the limit, the device will prevent the car from starting. Schumer said that it would be up to each state to decide whether to require the device in all new cars. As I noted in February, there would be a number of problems with widespread use of this device. For example, what if you’re the sober designated driver and your drunk passenger touches the steering wheel? Or, what if a driver is drunk but wears gloves when touching the steering wheel? Are all drivers going to be forbidden from wearing gloves so that their steering wheel sensors can be allowed to work? Would the sensors be set off if the driver had just used hand sanitizer or another grooming product made of alcohol? Worst, the sensors apparently could be used to inform law enforcement about the actions of people deemed over the limit if they touch the steering wheel but are prevented from driving.

As a Massachusetts drunk driving defense lawyer, I know all too well the terrible consequences that can ensue from accidents caused by drunk driving. I also know how disruptive it is to the life of an innocent person who has been charged unfairly with drunk driving. Being charged with a crime is embarrassing and stressful, but in addition, Massachusetts drivers can lose their driver’s licenses right away. This can cause very real problems at work and for meeting other obligations. That’s why, even though drunk driving is a serious problem, law enforcement owes drivers the courtesy of presuming they are innocent until proven guilty, just like any other criminal defendants.

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3513787950_24567e9450_mAs a Massachusetts OUI defense attorney, I was interested in a recent article in the New York Times about the challenges of convicting persons charged with driving under the influence of prescription drugs. The article describes accidents that occurred in New York, Maine and Wisconsin, in which people under the influence of prescription drugs including opiate painkillers, Ambien and Xanax allegedly caused serious, fatal accidents. Under Massachusetts law, charges of driving under the influence of prescription drugs can complex to defend against, because while it is illegal to drive after taking some prescription drugs — “narcotic drugs, depressants or stimulant substances” — other commonly prescribed drugs are not in these categories. But the complexity of the law also offers great opportunities for a Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense lawyer to mount a strong defense against these charges.

Read article: Drivers on prescription drugs are hard to convict

When someone is charged with operating under the influence of alcohol, police often use their own observations and field sobriety tests, in addition to a blood-alcohol concentration obtained by a breathalyzer or blood test. When someone is charged with OUI drugs, however, these sources of evidence are not reliable in the same ways. Proving that someone driving under the influence of prescription drugs is impaired is different from showing that they were driving under the influence of alcohol. Field sobriety tests — which are unreliable anyway, as I’ve discussed recently — don’t necessarily work for prescription drugs the way they do for alcohol. Police are looking for the same kinds of impairment in all drivers they suspect of being drunk, but different prescription medications can affect different drivers in different ways. Where anti-anxiety drugs can slow someone’s reaction time, stimulants can encourage risk-taking and impair someone’s ability to judge distances.

Of course, a breath test is unable to detect intoxication by prescription drugs. A blood test can show the presence of prescription drugs in someone’s body, and if the drug is included on the state’s list of drugs that it’s illegal to take before driving, then any amount of it in your blood is enough for an OUI drugs charge, even if it was legally prescribed. However, if the prosecution cannot establish that it’s illegal in our state to take the drug at issue and then drive, it has no case. Many prescription drugs fall outside the categories listed in Massachusetts law — for example, sedatives and sleep aids such as Ambien, or other unclassified prescription drugs like the anti-anxiety medication Xanax, and the anti-seizure medications Neurontin, Lamictal and Topamax (which is also used to prevent migraines).

An experienced Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense attorney can find several ways to defend charges of driving under the influence of prescription drugs. First, if the client is accused of driving under the influence of a drug that’s not on the list of illegal substances in Massachusetts state law, there is no illegal conduct. An experienced attorney will argue that the charges must be dropped in this situation. Second, an attorney can challenge any physical evidence that the police collected. Did a blood test show that the client actually had any drugs in his or her body? If there are results showing the presence of prohibited drugs, did they show enough of the substance to impair the person’s driving? Could the person’s body have metabolized the drugs more slowly than the medication’s label indicated, so that the drugs remained in their system longer than expected? Also, the prosecutor in such a case must obtain expert testimony from a Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) to establish that the drug involved violated the law.

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265600669_5b1b986ba4_mAs a Massachusetts OUI criminal defense attorney, my attention was caught by a story about a Peabody woman charged with second offense-drunk driving and two counts of child endangerment. According to The Salem News, bystanders saw the woman order her 11-year-old son out of her car and drive away, leaving him behind. She later returned to find police waiting for her, along with her son. According to a police report, bystanders saw Cheri Cordero, 40, tell her 11-year-old son to get out of her 2008 Cadillac Escalade near an intersection in Salem, and then drive away. He told the bystanders that his mother had been drinking, and that his 9-year-old brother was still in the car.

The bystanders called the police, and when they arrived, the boy told them that his mother had been drinking at a party on a friend’s boat. As they left the party, her boyfriend called and they got into an argument over the phone. Agitated, she began yelling at her sons, the boy said, and that was when she told the older boy to get out of the car and drove away. Some time later, just before 9 p.m., Cordero returned to where she had dropped him off. Police officers arrived at about the same time and noted that Cordero’s eyes were bloodshot and glassy and that she was slurring her words and smelled of alcohol. She said she had not been drinking, and that her kids were upset because they didn’t want to leave the party. She failed two unspecified field sobriety tests. She refused a breathalyzer test at the police station, so police seized her driver’s license and contacted the Department of Children and Families.

Read article: Peabody woman faces charges for drunk driving, child endangerment

Leaving an 11-year-old child to fend for himself on a street corner is clearly not the best choice for a parent to make, even when that parent intends to come right back. But Cordero’s behavior as a parent should not predetermine the outcome of her drunk driving charge. I hope that she will protect her own and her children’s future by contacting an experienced Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense attorney to ensure that she is treated fairly as her case goes through the legal system.

It’s important to note that since there is no breath test, the evidence against Cordero is all based on subjective observations made by police officers, such as field sobriety tests. Last week, I discussed the problems with field sobriety tests, and how easy it is to wrongly label someone as intoxicated based only on those tests. Cordero was most likely very upset at the time that she performed the field sobriety tests, so her performance on them could have been impaired by her emotional state even if she had not been drinking. It could also be that the police officers’ judgments about her mothering affected how they saw the field sobriety tests, too. Cordero never took a Breathalyzer, so there is no objective evidence of her blood-alcohol content — only observations of notoriously unreliable field sobriety tests and personal observations of her appearance and behavior.

Refusing a breathalyzer test comes with its own penalty: loss of driver’s license for 180 days for a first OUI, or three years for a second-offense OUI. Those who lose their license for refusal of the test can appeal the suspension with the RMV within 15 days. If their drunk driving case is resolved in their favor, they are entitled to a court hearing to get their license back as well. But this hearing is not automatic, which is why Cordero or anyone else facing OUI charges involving field sobriety tests should contact a Massachusetts drunk driving criminal defense lawyer who can challenge unreliable field sobriety tests.

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3834505031_fc87e26232_mPolice officers rely heavily on field sobriety tests when they suspect a driver of being intoxicated. Unfortunately, as a Massachusetts drunk driving defense attorney, I know that there are serious problems with these tests, and I use those problems as an element of my clients’ defense whenever appropriate. The appeal of field sobriety tests is clear: Drunk driving is dangerous and law enforcement agencies need easy-to-use, scientifically and legally valid ways of identifying drunkenness. Unfortunately, the field sobriety tests that are most commonly used in Massachusetts aren’t as reliable as they should be, and may not be administered properly. This means that completely innocent drivers who haven’t even had one drink can sometimes be arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recommends three specific field sobriety tests — the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, the walk-and-turn test, and the one-leg-stand — as the most reliable ones for police officers to use. The NHTSA says that police officers who use all three tests on a suspected drunk driver have a 91% chance of making the right call as to whether or not the driver is actually drunk. In what the NHTSA views as the most accurate one, the horizontal gaze nystagmus test (or “jerking eyeball test”), a police officer asks a driver to follow a small flashlight side to side with his or her eyes. If the driver is drunk, his or her eyeballs shake as they look to the side. The walk-and-turn test is similar to walking a balance beam back and forth on a straight line. And the one-leg stand involves perhaps the greatest physical challenge of the three: drivers are asked to stand still with their arms at their sides, raise one leg six inches off the ground while keeping it straight and pointing at their toes, looking at their raised toes, and count forward from 1,001. Swaying, raising arms for balance, hopping, putting the foot down, or starting to count before the police officer tells them to can all be viewed as signs of drunkenness.

Several years ago, the Washington Post ran an article about the faulty science behind these tests that I found fascinating, as a Massachusetts OUI defense lawyer. The scientific basis of field sobriety tests lies in a 33-year-old study of how well field sobriety tests could identify blood alcohol content. That study was conducted with 238 subjects, mostly men 22-29 years old, and no control group. As the article sums up, “So hundreds of thousands of drivers have been arrested — no doubt many deservedly so — on the basis of a 30-year-old study that, critics argue, has never been published in a peer-reviewed, scientific journal, never tested on a large scale with a control group and, perhaps more astonishing, has nothing to do with actual impairment from alcohol.”

Besides the tests’ scientific faultiness, they can also falsely identify as drunk people who just have medical issues. Balance disorders affect 40% of Americans at some point in their lives, and dizziness and vertigo are the third leading cause for visits to doctors. The older you get, and the heavier you get, the worse your balance. For an aging population with a growing number of overweight and obese people, the one-leg stand test sounds like a pretty ineffective gauge of whether someone is drunk.

This is why it’s important for anyone facing OUI charges to contact a Massachusetts intoxicated driving criminal defense lawyer immediately. Experienced OUI defense attorneys know how to legally challenge unreliable field sobriety tests and get that evidence thrown out, which can get the charges dismissed or help win a not-guilty verdict. Anyone accused of a crime with serious penalties like OUI should avail themselves of the expertise of a criminal defense lawyer like Stephen Neyman.

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In April, I wrote about the case of a Marblehead grandmother arrested for drunk driving while taking her nine-year-old grandson to school. An update on the outcome of her case caught my attention because it reminded me, as a Massachusetts drunk driving defense attorney, of how people convicted of OUI can face vastly different penalties for the same crime.

Sharon Faulkner, 63, of Marblehead, was found guilty at a bench trial in Lynn District court of second-offense OUI and leaving the scene of an accident. She pleaded guilty to child endangerment while operating under the influence and negligent operation of a motor vehicle. For these charges, Faulkner will spend a full year in a state house of correction. She will serve half of that time toward the OUI charge’s sentence of two and a half years. The remaining two years are suspended with supervised probation, and during that time, she will not be permitted to drive. The other half of the sentence represents her sentence for child endangerment while operating under the influence. Faulkner is also required to undergo a 14-day inpatient drug and alcohol treatment program, along with random tests to ensure that she remains drug- and alcohol-free, as ordered by the judge. Her home will be equipped with a Sobrietor, a machine that allows probation officers to test by phone whether she is sober.

Read article: Marblehead grandmother faces a year behind bars

Compare Faulkner’s sentence to that of Jane Doe, about whom I wrote last year. Featherstone, like Faulkner, pleaded guilty in Gloucester District Court to second-offense DUI, reckless operation of a motor vehicle and child endangerment. But Featherstone emerged with a much lighter sentence: a two-year loss of license, a 90-day suspended sentence, two years of probation, court costs and completion of the alcohol education program. Featherstone was able to avoid jail time, even though state law requires at least thirty days to be served in jail for a second-offense OUI. Most likely, this was because if the first offense OUI conviction is at least ten years old, the judge can opt for the “24D” alternative disposition, or in Featherstone’s case, a combination of 24D penalties and regular penalties.

Faulkner’s earlier OUI offense was more than ten years old too. She may have been sentenced more harshly because her probation had already been revoked for failure to stay sober, but it’s striking that where one person can receive no jail time at all, another can be sentenced to serve a full year for similar charges. This case shows that Massachusetts OUI defense lawyer’s results can differ dramatically from case to case. Many things factor into the ultimate result that are not disclosed in newspaper articles. When looking to hire a Massachusetts drunk driving defense lawyer, make sure that if you are comparing results you do so with full knowledge of the facts and circumstances of each case. The published result does not necessarily show the quality of lawyering that a defendant received.

Massachusetts law sets out serious penalties for those convicted of a second DUI. In addition to those mentioned above, there are fines and fees ranging from more than $600 to more than $10,000; loss of driver’s license for two years, including at least one year without eligibility for a hardship license; and negative consequences for work, family and auto insurance rates. With so much to lose, drivers facing a second drunk driving charge should not delay in contacting a Massachusetts intoxicated driving defense attorney to help them.

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