Labor Day Q & A: Motor Vehicle Law Edition
Our family gathers at the coast for Labor Day weekend. You’d be amazed how many motor vehicle law questions my relatives can generate over the course of a few hours […]
State v. Marino Finds No Error in Denying Defendant Source Code
The North Carolina Court of Appeals decided its first breath-testing source code case yesterday. The court in State v. Marino affirmed the trial court’s determination that the defendant had no […]
Avoiding Ignition Interlock by Pleading Guilty
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 […]
Been there . . . decided that
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 […]
Supreme Court Weighs in on Nonconsensual, Warrantless Blood Draws in DWI Cases
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 […]
DWLR and Out-of-State Revocations
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 […]
Continuing DWI Cases So the Analyst Can Appear
Trial courts may ultimately control their calendars, but there certainly is some power-sharing along the way. The constraints on a trial district court’s authority to manage the flow of litigation are […]
Whose Burden is it?
The State’s failure to accord a defendant his or her statutory implied consent rights as set forth in G.S. 20-16.2 may render the results of any ensuing breath test inadmissible. When a […]
Breath Tests: Can you believe them?
A six-year battle in Minnesota regarding the reliability of breath test results in impaired driving cases in light of alleged defects in the testing instrument’s source code ended last summer. […]
Limited Driving Privileges Following Revocations for Willful Refusals
Several earlier posts (here, here and here) address the availability of a limited driving privilege for a person whose driver’s license is revoked upon conviction of impaired driving. Such a […]