What Are Your Options For Defending Against An OVI Charge?

19 May 2021
 Categories: Law, Blog

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A conviction on an OVI charge can do a lot of harm. Beyond the obvious scenarios involving fines and potential jail time, a person may also lose their right to drive, and they may see the conviction appear on background checks.

Those are good reasons to hire an OVI defense attorney. However, you might wonder how you'll present your case. An OVI lawyer will usually explore options from one of the following four categories.

Procedural

OVI law includes some requirements regarding when a police officer can detain a person. Likewise, there are requirements for how they can determine whether a test for intoxication is appropriate. If the cops fail to follow these rules, an OVI attorney can argue that the process was illegal and the judge should dismiss the case.

Suppose the police claimed they pulled a driver over because they crossed the yellow line repeatedly. If the dashcam video from the police cruiser doesn't show this happened, it calls into question everything that happened after that.

Technological

Police departments use lots of technologies to determine the appropriateness of OVI arrests. This can start with the use of a radar gun to claim that a driver was speeding. Cops also use breath analysis equipment to measure how much alcohol is in a driver's system.

Operators need to keep these technologies calibrated. Otherwise, there can be false readings. An OVI lawyer can demand the discovery of the maintenance logs for all equipment used in a stop. Also, they can look at manufacturer's recalls and even motorist's complaints at a national scale that might indicate the equipment isn't dependable.

Legal Usage

Especially with cases involving drugs, there may be legal use arguments. Particularly, someone who has a prescription for a medication that doesn't indicate trouble while driving can argue nothing wrong happened. This argument gets tougher with legal recreational drug use, particularly if a driver goes from a state where it is legal to one where it isn't.

Medical

Some unusual medical conditions can lead to a person being declared over the limit for blood-alcohol content. A defendant who has such a condition can assert that the reading was due to the medical issue and not illegal levels of alcohol consumption. Generally, it takes a good bit of documentation of reports from doctors to back up this sort of argument. However, such people often have extremely high alcohol tolerances because their bodies always produce alcohol.