Our client was stopped by law enforcement for drifting over the center line and speeding. Upon approaching the vehicle, law enforcement also noticed 3 beer cans lying on the passenger seat. The police asked the client to exit the vehicle and perform field sobriety tests (which they said she failed) and they ultimately placed her under arrest for OWI 2nd offense. Her blood test result was also above the legal limit (.095).
Client had spoken to many lawyers before settling on Chirafisi & Verhoff. The client made it clear that she could not be convicted and we went to work.
After conducting the administrative review hearing, it became clear that the area to attack was whether or not law enforcement had reason to believe that the defendant was actually impaired. We took a gamble in this situation and it paid off: the prosecutor, who did not have access to the transcript of the administrative review hearing, asked if we would share that with him prior to the motion hearing. Normally that is not something that we would do, however, in this situation we believed it could help the client.
After reviewing our examination of the officer, the prosecutor agreed that the case was in jeopardy and made an offer to resolve the case for a reckless driving citation.