DUI Defense Strategies (cont’d.)
Fort Lauderdale DUI lawyers have a lot of experience dealing with police officers who make quick decisions to arrest someone for DUI. As was mentioned in the previous section, if a DUI police officer is asking you to do field sobriety exercises, that means he/she has already decided you are likely impaired.
As a matter of public safety, the officer is likely going to take you off the road. However, the only way to take you off the road is to arrest you.
Therefore, it is extremely important to realize that by the time a DUI officer has you doing field sobriety exercises, he/she already thinks you are impaired enough to arrest. At this point in the DUI case, the officer is focused on building a case and collecting evidence.
Remember, to lawfully arrest you for any crime, a police officer has to be able to articulate probable cause as to why he thought you had committed or were committing a crime.
In any event, in my experience as Fort Lauderdale DUI lawyer, I can tell you that most DUI police officers will ask a suspect to perform the walk and turn field sobriety exercise after he/she has the suspect submit to horizontal gaze nystagmus testing.
When the DUI officer instructs the suspect on how to perform the walk and turn exercises, he/she will typically advise the person to do the following: walk in a straight line, heel touching toe, while keeping your arms at your sides, for 9 steps, then turn around while pivoting on the ball of your foot for 180 degrees and then walk back for 9 additional steps, heel touching toe, arms at your sides.
Take 9 steps forward in a straight line, heel touching toe, arms at your sides, then at the end of the 9 steps pivot around 180 degrees on the ball of your foot, then walk 9 more steps back, heel touching toe, still keeping your arms at your sides.
People refer to this exercise as the “walk the line” test. Except, the DUI officer is testing for a lot more than the ability to walk in a straight line. Specifically, he/she is looking for your ability to not only walk in a straight line, but to do so without any gaps between steps, to do so without using your arms for balance, to do so while counting a precise number of steps, to turn around in a specific fashion and then repeat the sequence.
If you fail to click the heel of your front foot on the toe cap of your back foot, it will be considered a sign of impairment and counted against you. Same thing if you use your arms for balance or forget to keep them at your sides.