A UNC School of Government Blog
Shea Denning Rule 45. This rule surprised me. Before I learned about it, I assumed that when a party sought to introduce hospital medical records at trial, a records custodian appeared in court to testify that the records met the requirements for the business records hearsay exception. Turns out, however, that because of this rule, custodians of … Read more
Forget all your legal training. Pretend you are a juror in a DWI case. Facts. The following facts were established at trial: The defendant was stopped at a checkpoint. The officer smelled alcohol and defendant admitted that he had consumed two glasses of wine earlier in the evening. No field sobriety tests were administered, and … Read more
As state crime lab backlogs increase, it takes longer and longer for blood drawn in connection with impaired driving cases to be tested. In some of these cases, the State may opt to proceed to trial without the results. And sometimes defendants are eager to plead guilty before such blood is tested. A defendant who … Read more
The National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendation that states lower their per se blood alcohol concentrations for impaired driving from 0.08 to 0.05 grabbed headlines last week. But the BAC reduction wasn’t NTSB’s only recommendation. Overlooked in the 0.05 hullabaloo was NTSB’s endorsement of the Sniffer. That’s right. The Sniffer. It’s more powerful than a nose. … Read more
Whether a suspect refused to submit to a breath test is a hotly contested issue in many impaired driving cases. That determination is critical to two proceedings: the administrative proceeding to determine whether the person’s license will be revoked as a result of the alleged refusal and the criminal trial at which a refusal may … Read more
Even the greenest of prosecutors knows to ask it. And all officers, from rookie to veteran, know how to answer. Rare is the impaired driving case without it. What’s the it? The opinion question, of course. You’ll find the following exchange recorded in many a DWI transcript. Q: Did you form an opinion, satisfactory to … Read more
The United States Supreme Court decided Missouri v McNeely yesterday, holding that in impaired driving investigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant. The high court thus resolved the split among state courts regarding whether its … Read more
Suppose a police officer patrolling a city street lawfully pulls over a car with out-of-state tags. When the officer asks the driver for his driver’s license, the driver tells the officer: I had a Maryland driver’s license, but it was revoked. May the law enforcement officer properly charge the defendant with driving while license revoked … Read more
Vehicle crashes are an obvious risk of impaired driving. Thus, it is not unusual for impaired driving prosecutions to follow post-crash investigations, which typically include questioning of the suspected driver. When the State prosecutes impaired driving cases that follow certain types of crashes—namely single car crashes to which there are no witnesses other than the … Read more
The state crime lab and other local laboratories perform nearly 10,000 blood toxicology analyses annually, the vast majority of them in impaired driving cases. Unlike breath analysis results, which the State has in hand before a person’s initial appearance in an impaired driving case, several months may elapse after a person’s arrest for impaired driving … Read more