They Didn’t Read Me My Rights!

Many times police officers forget to read people their rights when arresting the driver for DUI.  You may wonder if the officer’s failure to “read your rights” to you will make the DUI arrest go away. The short answer is no it will not.  An officer reads someone who is arrested their rights because of a case called Arizona v. Miranda.  In that case the Supreme Court held that if an officer fails to inform an arrestee of their rights, they may not use any statements that the arrestee made during interrogation while in custody.  The case applied to DUI cases doesn’t work to get the case dismissed because most of the observations of the police officer during a DUI arrest are not statements by the arrestee.  And those observations can serve as evidence against the arrestee later in court.

During the arrest process, the officer may read a questionnaire which begins “Do you know what time it is?”  and ends 20 questions later with “Are you under the influence of alcohol or drugs now?”  The answers to those questions can’t be used against an arrestee if the officer has failed to read the arrestee his or her rights.  Statements made by the driver that are not in response to a question from the officer, for example, “I really shouldn’t be driving” or “I am way too drunk to do your test” can be used by the court because there was not an interrogation to get those statements.  Likewise, any statements made before the arrest like, “I couldn’t do this test if I was sober.”  can be used at trial because the court is likely to find that the driver was not in custody at the time of the statement so Miranda doesn’t work to keep out the statements.

All of the statements that the prosecution seeks to use at trial should be examined to see if they can be excluded from trial, your attorney will work to see that improper statements are kept out of trial.