Can You Challenge a Dui?

The police pull you over after you’ve had a few drinks with dinner. You didn’t think that you were over the legal limit, but they give you a breath test and it comes in at 0.08%. It’s right at the legal limit and you get arrested.

This is the point where a lot of people decide that there’s not a lot they can do. The breath test is evidence of impairment, so they think it’s an open and shut case. How would you challenge something like this?

Was the officer trained?

There are actually a lot of reasons to call a breath test into question, including the fact that the officer needs to be trained to use the test. If the officer wasn’t trained in a reasonable timeframe, those results may be questionable.

Was the best test calibrated?

You also want to consider if the physical test itself was working properly. Police departments are only supposed to use certain makes and models, so it needs to be the right one, and they’re supposed to calibrate them on a set schedule. If they failed to do any of this, the results may not stand.

Did you just stop drinking?

One other thing to think about is that people with alcohol still in their mouths will actively blow a higher level than their actual blood alcohol concentration. If someone has just stopped drinking and then takes a breath test, they could get an artificially high reading.

These are just a few of the ways that you can challenge a DUI, even with a high breath test reading. Be sure you carefully consider all of your legal options.