Tag Archives: drugged driving

Image source: National Eye Institute https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Checking_Blood_Sample_(9955279835).jpg Can a patient seeking care at a hospital give a blood sample for the purposes of acquiring medical treatment while retaining their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure of that sample of blood by the police? According to a recent Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals decision[1], the official answer is still unclear. On February 16, 2013, an Alabama driver struck and severely injured a pedestrian. The police arrived on the scene, and ... Read More »

In Missouri, voters passed Amendment 3 on November 8, 2022. The constitutional amendment   allows for recreational marijuana use. Recreational marijuana may substantially affect police investigations as well as DWI enforcement. Police officers have long used the ubiquitous “odor of marijuana” to justify searches of vehicles. Driving While Intoxicated charges are commonly brought when an officer suspects smells marijuana on a driver and suspects marijuana intoxication. What is marijuana intoxication? At what level does marijuana use affect safe driving? These are ... Read More »

There has been a lot of discussion both before and after the passage of President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill, but there has been little emphasis on the effect it will have on DUI/DWI/OWI cases.  In particular, the “Advanced Impaired Driving Technology” portion of the new law (Section 24220) directs automakers to install new technology designed to stop drivers from being able to start or continue to operate the vehicle if it detects they are impaired by alcohol. According to the legislation, ... Read More »

ALBANY, NY (WRGB) — They estimate this could being in 375 million dollars a year in revenue. Lawmakers tell CBS 6 they have made an agreement, But critics of legal marijuana are concerned about what this could mean for public safety, specifically about impaired driving. “We have passed the point of legalized cannabis. It’s in New Jersey it’s in Massachusetts,” Governor Cuomo said in a briefing. The text of the bill hasn’t been finalized yet, but Assembly members say the ... Read More »

Jan. 23, 2021, 8:51 PM EST / Source: TODAY By Francesca Gariano Instagram (Justin Beiber Official Page) Justin Bieber is reflecting seven years after his arrest in Miami Beach on Jan. 23, 2014. Beiber was charged with DUI, resisting arrest without violence, and an expired driver’s license. The 26-year-old singer admitted that he was not proud of where he was in his life at age 19 sharing a photo of his arrest on Instagram, above, using the caption to look ... Read More »

Substantiating British research from many years ago, a car crash study reported on May 20, 2019 in the online version of the journal Addiction, found no statistically significant relationship between drivers testing positive for Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or other drugs and those who did not in contributing to a motor vehicle collisions. The study was based on 3005 injured drivers and police reports on 2318.  In particular, the findings found no statistically significant relationship between testing positive for THC and the risk ... Read More »

In September 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that police cannot give testimony that, in the officer’s opinion, a driver was under the influence of marijuana based on their on-scene observations, including sobriety tests. The court found that there is no consensus in the scientific community that roadside sobriety tests prove someone is under the influence of marijuana. The judges noted that the effects of marijuana “vary greatly from one individual to another, and those effects are as ... Read More »

The effects of alcohol intoxication are relatively well-known, and they are also relatively universal among different people. The amount of alcohol concentration in one’s bloodstream that causes these effects differs among each of us (e.g. tolerance). Moreover, the amount of time it takes to experience these effects is dependent upon a number of factors such as how quickly the alcohol is consumed, the amount of food in one’s stomach, etc. Nonetheless, all states[1] in the U.S. have adopted the 0.08% ... Read More »

Officers may not particularly like recordings of traffic stops and DUI investigations—after all, who wants all their actions recorded for review by their supervisor and potentially the public? Nonetheless, body cameras are invaluable in protecting both officers and citizens during non-routine encounters because the video footage provides a complete and unbiased recordation of the full situation. In DUI cases, though, the recordings provide experienced defense counsel the opportunity to detect Constitutional violations and procedural mistakes. In particular, lawyers scrutinize the ... Read More »

This is the second in a series of blog posts about recent changes to Tennessee’s Implied Consent Law.  If you missed Part 1, you may read it here: “To Blow or Not to Blow: Tennessee’s 2017 Implied Consent Law –  Part 1.” As discussed in Part 1, effective July 1, 2017, Tennessee made sweeping changes to its Implied Consent Law in an apparent attempt to comply with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S.Ct. 2160 ... Read More »