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Most Recent Blog Entries
A 32-year-old Gainesville woman was charged with DUI, eight counts of child neglect and driving with a suspended license when she was pulled over for causing a minor traffic accident, the Gainesville Sun reports. The incident occurred at approximately 9:50 p.m. on a Friday night, and the suspect indicated she had been on her way to a bar.
The woman was driving a Kia van and was pulled over after side-swiping another vehicle. The arresting officer discovered 8 children in the van, ranging in age from 10 months to 14 years. No injuries were reported related to the accident.
Upon inspection, the officer suspected the driver was intoxicated and executed standard field sobriety testing. When she was later tested with a breathalyzer, the suspect was found to have a BAC of .166, more than twice Florida’s legal limit of .08.…
Red light cameras have made quite a splash in Sarasota area since being put into use by law enforcement in January of this year. Having collected more than $1 million in red light fines in just the first six months of this year, Sarasota has quickly become the 10th most active ticketer among Florida’s 71 cities and counties that use red light cameras. In fact, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the city of Sarasota issued more tickets and collected more fines in June than Orlando, Tallahasee and Fort Lauderdale, cities that each have at least three times the population of Sarasota.…
In an effort to increase penalties for drunk driving nationwide, federal officials have indicated they will begin incentivizing states to pass legislation requiring ignition interlock devices for all DUI convictions, including first time offenders. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) official David L. Strickland told the Washington Post “We think that interlocks for first time offenders is the best overall policy,” and “We’re looking to get more states to pass these laws and getting more drunks off the road.” The NHTSA hopes to do so by mobilizing a budget of $20.8 million in highway safety funds as incentive for states to pass legislation.…
A Marion County man has been charged with his 5th DUI after being arrested for driving a lawnmower in the opposite lane of traffic. The 68-year-old resident claimed to not have possessed a driver’s license since 1985 as a result of a previous DUI conviction.
WDBO.com obtained video of the traffic stop, subsequent sobriety test and arrest from the arresting officer’s dashboard camera. Suspect James Gray was pulled over when a police deputy observed him riding his lawn mower against traffic on Northeast 30th Court last Tuesday. The arresting officer informed Gray that he was pulled over for this reason, to which Gray responded, “I thought that’s the way I was supposed to.” In fact, it is illegal to drive a lawnmower on Florida roads at all, much less against the normal pattern of traffic.…
A 44-year-old Pasco County man found himself in quite the pickle when he drove his SUV into a parked police cruiser earlier this month. Although the police cruiser, which was carrying both an officer and an arrested suspect, was parked away from the road with its emergency lights activated, the suspect struck the side of the vehicle, injuring two police officers and one civilian.
According to the Tarpon Springs Police Department Press Release, the incident occurred at approximately 9:33 on a Wednesday night. Officer Steve Gassen had just completed an arrest of suspect Amy Beth Jakaitis-Hobbs for violation of a Domestic Violence Injunction after a routine traffic stop of her red Taishou scooter. Ms.…
Florida has hopped on the bandwagon of instituting an ignition interlock program for DUI offenders, joining 46 states and the District of Columbia in using these devices as a deterrent for repeat DUI offenders.
An ignition interlock device (IID) is like a breathalyzer machine installed onto the dashboard of a motor vehicle. Before starting the car, the driver is required to breathe into the IID to demonstrate that there is little or no alcohol in their system. In Florida, the maximum allowable amount programmed into the device is .05. If alcohol is found in concentrations of .05 or more in the blood, the IID will prevent the vehicle from starting.…
A report issued by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) on the state of Florida’s misdemeanor courts analyzed the Florida misdemeanor court system that 3% of the state’s adult population passes through each year. Authored by University of Tampa, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice members Sean Maddan, Ph.D. and Alisa Smith, JD, the report is entitled “Three-Minute Justice: Haste and Waste in Florida’s Misdemeanor Courts” and incorporates data from 21 counties in the state of Florida.
The report found that 82% of court arraignments lasted three minutes or less, and 91% were five minutes or less, with a total average arraignment time of 2.93 minutes. This is a shockingly short amount of time, given that during this period the judge must determine whether the defendant will proceed with or without counsel, what plea they will enter and, in many cases, will accept a plea of guilty or no contest.…
The potential for error in chemical testing of BAC levels for purposes of a DUI investigation is well documented. Imagine agreeing to a chemical test in the course of a DUI investigation because you KNOW you have had only one standard drink in the last two hours, only to find yourself blowing well above the legal limit. Clearly the test results were in error, and yet in a court of law those numbers will be near impossible to disprove.
A little known area of Florida law, Statute Section 316.1932(1)(f)(3) gives drivers some measure of protection against these sorts of situations. The law states:
The person tested may, at his or her own expense, have a physician, registered nurse, other personnel authorized by a hospital to draw blood, or duly licensed clinical laboratory director, supervisor, technologist, or technician, or other person of his or her own choosing administer an independent test in addition to the test administered at the direction of the law enforcement officer for the purpose of determining the amount of alcohol in the person’s blood or breath or the presence of chemical substances or controlled substances at the time alleged, as shown by chemical analysis of his or her blood or urine, or by chemical or physical test of his or her breath.
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In the last two years, Florida law enforcement has begun frequently employing the use of little-known tactic to catch DUI offenders called the no-refusal checkpoint. Sobriety checkpoints have been commonplace in most Florida counties for many years. However, no refusal checkpoints are a recent phenomenon, and have been the subject of considerable controversy, particularly in relation to their constitutionality.
So what exactly is a no-refusal checkpoint? Like traditional sobriety checkpoints, local law enforcement set up a traffic stop or road blockade with or without prior announcement, where officers stop oncoming traffic and conduct random inspections of passing driver’s sobriety.
However, in previous iterations of the sobriety checkpoint, drivers were allowed to refuse chemical tests (most commonly a breathalyzer), forcing law enforcement officers to gather other evidence to support the levying of DUI charges. In the no-refusal model, law enforcement will bring a judge on-site at the location of the sobriety checkpoint. In the event that a driver refuses a chemical test, the judge can issue an on-the-spot warrant compelling the driver to submit to the test. Sometimes the warrant requires the driver to submit to an extremely intrusive blood test, rather than less intrusive options such as a breathalyzer or urine test.…
Besmirched Pinellas County sheriff’s deputy John Hubbard is vying hard to be reinstated to the sheriff’s department after being vacated from his post for systemically botching DUI investigations and arrests. According to Bay News 9, Hubbard was transferred from patrol to bailiff last year after an extensive internal affairs investigation reported that the DUI investigations he conducted routinely “lacked important/sufficient information to prosecute the cases.”
The internal affairs investigation covered 38 arrests executed by Hubbard between January 2010 and June 2011, of which 27 were for DUI. In a startling 24 of those cases (nearly 90%), the original DUI charges were either reduced or dropped entirely. This usually happened because the suspect’s BAC was found to barely reach or be below the legal limit of .08, or the suspect refused chemical testing after interacting with Hubbard.…
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