alkemyst
No Lifer
- Feb 13, 2001
- 83,769
- 19
- 81
Well I had 4 beers one night over about 6 hours or so....last beer about 1 hour before I left. Ended up stopped pulling into the driveway I was living at. Cop said I turned the corner without signalling. Anyways...he has me do my field side on the middle stripe of a two lane road, during which about 5 cars had breezed by me. The other officer and him waited on the side of the road with their spotlights in my face....there was no street lights on this road.
So I do all the tests...much of it I couldn't understand as they were about 15' away on the side of the road and not on a PA...for the alphabet test I thought they wanted it backwards....he actually wrote the alphabet backwards on the report 4 separate times with big letters next to it (????? WHAT IS THIS GUY ON?) so out come the cuffs and I get arrested. Get down to the station about 1.5-2hours later where I blew a 0.168....I have no idea what or how, but I do know they had me blow and reblow about 10 times...the arresting officer also did 'something' to the machine...I have no idea.
I spent the night in jail....no phone call, no bail possible.
However that level is enough to hold up in court. I tried to hire an attorney and was told even with a great defense you are still looking at only minimizing the penality....9 times out of 10 the BAC reading is upheld. Turns out in studying it I had busted open my lip (my teeth got knocked through it)....any blood in you mouth will cause a huge problem with the breathalyzer, I was on the tape asking for something to rinse my mouth out during the taped testing due to it bleeding.
The long and short of it is I could take the punishment and not risk a second arrest for a total cost of about $3-4k (this one was a setup in the fact that although I don't think the cop thought I would fail, he knew the girl I was breaking up with whose house I was staying at) or spend about $10k to retain an attorney, plus most of the $3-4k in things you have to do (my car was towed from my driveway at a 'special' cost of about 5 times what a normal tow costs...it was around 2 miles for $500).
In order for my defense I would have to hire actual expert witnesses, you cannot make statements even if you were a specialist yourself. Most of these experts want about $3-5k + expenses for each hearing....you usually have 3 or more if you are contesting....
If you just plead guilty you can drive for work related necessity right away and after 3 months you can drive whenever. However if you contest it, you cannot drive at all, even to work for as long as the trial takes (here in florida I was looking at about 1 year for my first hearing)....it's simply crazy. All the tapes the lawyer had should me coherent and alert, and obviously not sure of what the officers wanted and not comfortable with where I was being tested. I did pretty good on the Fieldside tests....I found out most people cannot do these well (there is a tape you watch and try to pick out who is drunk and who is not....it works out that most people think the drunk is sober and the sober is drunk or a totally random inaccuracy, most people though think most of the 'sample' was drunk, the fact is like only 1 or 2 of the 15 or so examples were actually over the limit of intoxication)....the whole purpose of the tapes is most jurys if it goes there will think you are extremely drunk.
They make you take these classes which some of them are just propaganda, however you share your stories. There were two people arrested for not even driving.....one had just gotten cigarettes out of his car and was walking back inside to a party, another was sleeping in his backseat in the bar parking lot. There was a guy from NY or NJ who just paid cash for a corvette or something (it was $50k) and was detailing it in a garage while drinking....they arrested him even though the keys were on a ring in the garage, they impounded his car....he left the state and came to florida. His total costs were about $200k as he was fighting it. The teacher mentioned 'yeah I read all the reports, and your's really stood out'....fact is even the instructor did not agree with why some of us where there and told us how really it's not as bad of a problem as it's made out to be.
something like 1 in 7 drivers after 9pm on the road between friday and sunday night are over the limit. After midnight that number goes to 1 in 3. However the number of accidents are surprisingly small considering that number. He stated the BAC number in his opinion was far too low for most people and a little high for some.
I used to think MADD and SADD were helpful, but I have found out their ways have made for a very unconstitutional system as well as mostly setup themselves for lobbying power.
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