A DUI case in Fulton County twenty years ago was more of a he says, she says case. It compared this word of the driver with the subjective observations of the arresting officer that the speech was slurred or that the victim was unsteady on his feet. But nowadays, Atlanta law enforcers have a mute, exceedingly efficient accomplice in the investigations: your online trail.
We are living in the modern age where we are voluntarily recording our lives as they happen. We Instagram in restaurants along the Beltline, leave Instagram stories in bars in The Battery, and use GPS to know where to go home. But it is also convenient, and this digital trail is establishing a trail of consumption and movement that prosecutors are finding easier to use to develop airtight DUI convictions. Your smartphone could already be called in court before you can roll down your window.
The Timeline Trap: Evidence of Social Media.
The best example of digital evidence that is typically utilized in an Atlanta DUI case is the creation of a timeline that contradicts the timeline embedded within the statement of the driver.
Take a typical example: A motorist has been stopped on I-85 at 2:00 AM. They explain to the Georgia State Patrol trooper that they left the house of one of their friends, and when they left, they had two beers. Previously, the field sobriety tests had to be utilized by the officer to dispute that claim.
This may be as simple as skimming through social media accounts of ordinary people on social media today and seeing an Instagram story at midnight featuring the driver taking shots at a club in Buckhead, or a Facebook post at 11.30 PM showing a check-in at a brewery. The next moment, the words of the driver believe to be false, which destroys his/her credibility and gives the state definite evidence of recent alcohol drinking. Prosecutors do not have to establish precisely how many drinks you consumed, they only need to demonstrate that your timeline is false in order to prove consciousness of guilt.
The Silent Tracker: geofencing and location Data.
It is not what you write on your own but what is recorded on your devices unintentionally. Your cell phone is in constant contact with cell towers and GPS satellites and your position is recorded with the astounding precision.
In severe instances of DUI, especially where an accident or vehicular killing is involved, the Atlanta investigators often receive a warrant to recover such data of location. They are able to trace just where you were and how long. When your GPS on phone displays that you were at three different bars in four hours before your arrest, a jury will most certainly conclude that you were drinking at every place, no matter what you said to the police.
Moreover, the contemporary cars are digital eyewitnesses. Your car infotainment system has a tendency to download your call history and text messages when you connect your phone to it through Bluetooth. Should an accident occur, the black box (the Event Data Recorder) on the vehicle records important information such as speed, braking, and steering actions in the seconds before the collision, which can be utilized to demonstrate aggressive, less safe driving habits.
Defense in Digital Evidence.
The floods of digital evidence complicate the defence of a DUI charge to a considerable degree, but not to an unsurmountable level. An experienced DUI Attorney Atlanta understands that the digital evidence is not always what it is.
The defense mechanisms in this case usually encompass attacking the admissibility of the evidence. Did the search warrant of the phone obtain the legality? Does the prosecution have a solid case that you posted on social media, and not one of your friends who access your phone? Was the photo time-stamped, or was it a latergram that was posted many hours after the event?
The Need for a Modern Defense
When you are under DUI charges in super Atlanta, you cannot afford utilizing a defense model of the 1990s. You require the advice of a lawyer who is knowledgeable in digital forensics as well as he is in the traffic law of Georgia.
To struggle with such charges, one will have to on the offensive so as to suppress any digital evidence that was obtained illegally and blame the state on how it interprets your data. James Yeargan is a DUI attorney at Atlanta who understands the important role of technology in the modern prosecution. When you are being investigated using your digital life to create a criminal case against you, you need to make sure that you have an experienced DUI Attorney Atlanta in order to save your future.
