It is a very frightening experience being late at night in the city and being pulled over. The heart beats wildly when the flashing lights turn on, and the circumstance is further aggravated by the fact that the officer could require you to leave your vehicle and perform physical exercises when he asks you to do so. Such tests are called standardized field sobriety tests and are usually brought out by the police as conclusive evidence that you are drunk. These tests are however very sensitive to the environment and the mere physical layout of the city can be enough to predetermine your failure. It is important to consult an experienced Atlanta DUI Attorney before you leap to believe that a poor performance at the side of the road is a sure conviction because the attorney will examine the real circumstances of your roadside arrest.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provides stringent rules on the manner in which field sobriety tests should be administered by the police officers, and they usually include walk and turn and one leg stand. Based on these federal standards, such physical evaluations should be carried out on a dry, firm, flat and non slippery surface. Whoever has ever travelled by metro knows that smooth and unbroken roads are difficult to find in the metro area. The topography of the area in general from the steep, winding hills of Buckhead to the heavily sloping gravel shoulders of Interstate 285 also tend to literally contravene the necessary testing conditions. An educated DUI Lawyer Atlanta knows that falling on a pothole infested road does not imply that one is legally impaired.
Unluckily, the officers that arrest you seldom consider these environmental weaknesses when rating your performance. They are conditioned to see certain signs of impairment including the use of your arms to balance, swaying, or to put your foot down. Of course, a sober man in a sloping embankment, or on a broken sidewalk in the dark, will probably show these very same behaviors simply in an attempt to keep his feet on. It is precisely because the finer details of the roadside setting are of such significance to your defense. With Atlanta DUI Attorney James Yeargan of Yeargan & KERT LLC representing you, your defense team will carefully examine the police records, body footage, and dashcam footage to demonstrate that the testing surface was completely unsuitable to conduct a standardized assessment.
Other environmental conditions such as the uneven pavement, steep inclines and many more can totally nullify the outcome of a field sobriety test. The walk and turn test may involve an imaginary line that cannot be seen due to poor lighting on the street. Traffic moving at a high speed, which is much heavier than normal, and rushing past you by feet, can give you great anxiety and physical abuse by the wind, making it almost impossible to support oneself on one leg stand within a half minute. Moreover, the debris on the road, bad weather, or inappropriate footwear can all be the factors adding a perceived failure. A good DUI Attorney Atlanta will be able to dissect each and every external circumstance that impaired your capability to carry out the physical work that the officer requested.
You ought never to confess just because an officer informed you that you did not pass the roadside tests. The law system demands such assessments to be carried out under certain controlled circumstances and the side of an urban highway street is seldom in that place. Your legal representative can in many cases have the test results suppressed as evidence by contesting the validity of the testing environment. The absence of such results makes the case presented by the prosecutors much weaker. The best way to go in this matter is to hire an Atlanta DUI Lawyer, so that the individuality of the city is not used as a scapegoat to have you convicted of a crime that you did not commit.
