Challenging Your Minnesota DWI Charges
St. Cloud, MN-A DWI, as you may already know, can have a huge impact on your life. Sure, most of the time it’s misdemeanor charge and you may not have to spend any time behind bars. But drunken or drugged driving charge is not something that should be looked at as a frivolous charge with negligible consequences. It
You don’t want to the chance of miscalculating the consequences so you should challenge your charge by hiring a St. Cloud DWI attorney on year team, championing for your rights and crafting your defense. A solid defense can allow you to avoid conviction or give a defendant leverage to negotiate a plea bargain to lesser charge of wet reckless. While every DWI case is different, there are a number of possible defenses you and your lawyer can explore.
The first step in challenging your DWI charge is to question whether the officer who pulled you over had just cause to conduct a traffic stop in the first place. Any small lane deviation or slight error can lead to a traffic stop and then an arrest. People are pulled over for no reason and sober people are arrested for DWIs so it is always wise to have some with knowledge of Minnesota DWI laws to look over your case. As part of you defense, your attorney can question whether you actually violated traffic laws? Or, whether you were driving recklessly? Our constitution forbids police from stopping a person for the sole person fishing for evidence against you, and police can make an errors or misjudge just like anyone else. It may turn out that an officer didn’t have enough probable cause to arrest you in the first place. So, your DWI attorney will first ask: did the officer have a valid reason to stop you to begin with?
Another component of an effective DWI defense is to challenge whether you were actually intoxicated at the time of your arrest. Again, people are wrongfully arrested and charged with crimes every day and the same goes for DWIs. To get more evidence that you are intoxicated, police will ask you to participate in field sobriety tests. These tests assess your coordination, balance and cognitive abilities and look for physical cues of intoxication such as pupil dilation.
Field sobriety tests are considered fairly accurate, but even the Highway Traffic Safety Administration asserts that there are factors that can affect a person’s ability to perform such tests. Obesity, age, previous injuries to the back, legs, or ankles, along with health problems, such as diabetes or a brain injury, can affect a person’s coordination, causing them to perform poorly during these tests. And they developed the standards for conducting field sobriety tests.
This is where you run into the dilemma of whether to submit to chemical tests or not. That is not a simple question to answer since there are separate consequences for refusing. It’s calculated risk.
Breathalyzers can be inaccurate so challenging the accuracy of these test results is another component of a rigorous DWI defense. These machines must be regularly calibrated to give accurate results and some law enforcement agencies neglect upkeep on these devices. Even a software glitch can give an inaccurate reading. Diabetes also affects the results of a breathalyzer. Simply consuming cough syrup, using mouth wash or lip balms can give an inaccurate breathalyzer reading.
A DWI arrest can have a number of negative implications for a person facing these charges. If convicted of DWI in Minnesota, you can face up to 90 days in jail, have their license revoked for up to 90 days and pay a $1,000 fine. You’ll take a hit on your record to top it all off. A St. Cloud DWI attorney may be your best hope for avoiding a DWI conviction.
