Articles Posted in Criminal Defense

It is always surprising that so many people are stopped by the police and arrested for DUI when the  reason they were stopped in the first place had nothing to do with DUI. I think more DUI arrests result from vehicle defects then from weaving.

The Fourth Amendment says that the police cannot stop you anytime they feel like it. They have to have a reason to stop you. The amount of evidence police must have to stop you depends on the situation. There are two levels of evidence that justify a stop. These are Reasonable and Articulable Suspicion, and Probable Cause.

Reasonable and Articulable Suspicion is the amount of evidence necessary to justify a belief that a person might be violating the law. That belief must be reasonable in the circumstances and based on evidence to support that reason. The officer must be able to articulate that reason as the reason for the stop.  Also the reason for the stop must be related to the subsequent investigation. This means that the officer cannot just invent a reason as a pretext. The police cannot stop you on a mere hunch.

I posted a while ago about a new law the Aroostook County DA wanted to push through.  There were four very bad things in the law.

They wanted to make it illegal to drive if you were taking any prescription medication. Not just drugs that get you high, any prescription medication.  If you went to the doctor and he prescribed anything, the prosecutors were going to make it illegal for you to drive.

They were going to test for it with immunoassay tests – tests that give a lot of false positive results.