DUI Attorney
FREDERICK V. BAUERLEIN
171 Village Parkway
Build 8A
Marietta, Georgia
30067
Telephone: 678-
Fax:770-
fred@duifred.com
Websites By: AtlantaWebster.Com 678-
Legislation calls for felony charges for repeated offenders. In 2010 the General Assembly passed legislation increasing the penalties for driving under the influence in Georgia. The new rule aims at severely penalizing repeat drunk driving offenders.
Man charged with drunken driving asks manufacturer of Breathalyzer-
History of Field Sobriety Testing:
BRIEF HISTORY OF FIELD SOBRIETY TESTING
In June, 1977, Southern California Research Institute began research for the National
Highway Traffic Safety Association("NHTSA") to evaluate the physical coordination
tests currently being used at the time to determine their relationship to intoxication
and to develop and standardize tests that would provide more reliable evidence of
impairment. They used 238 volunteers, who were subjected to each of the following
tests: One-
1) The One Leg Stand;
2) the Walk & Turn; and
3) the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus.
In implementing these standardized evaluations, NHTSA has promulgated exacting standards by which the evaluations must be administered; this to ensure their reliability and validity. These standards are published in a manual given to every officer who is NHTSA trained. This manual provides the precise procedures by which police officers are to administer the NHTSA approved FST's to DUI suspects. More importantly, the precise methodology laid out by NHTSA for the administration of FST's provides a long overdue objective standard to which the arresting officer can be held.
POLICE TRAINING
In Georgia, all police officers are supposed to be trained pursuant to the standards promulgated by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (P.O.S.T.) and most are. As of October 1, 1995, P.O.S.T. adopted the three NHTSA approved FST's and the corresponding standards for the administration thereof. While this NHTSA training is mandatory for all new police recruits in Georgia, many veteran officers have not been NHTSA trained. Thus, it is important for lawyers to determine via pretrial discovery whether the arresting officer has had NHTSA training. Cross examination techniques for NHTSA trained officers may be markedly different from those who have not been so trained. Lawyers will be well served on cross examination by holding NHTSA trained officers to the high standards mandated by NHTSA for the administration of FST's. In contrast, with non NHTSA trained officers, your goal is to show the jury an officer administering complex tests without the training and knowledge to do so properly. But, even where the arresting officer has not been NHTSA trained, every attempt should be made to cross examine as to the NHTSA standards. Your lawyer should ask several questions. Find out what sort of training the officer does have. Who showed him how to administer an FST? What expertise did that instructor have? Why was that particular test employed? What assurances does the officer have that the test is accurate?. Surely a lack of adequate training in administering tests the state holds out to be scientific and objective should not be a shield behind which the untrained officer can hide while others in the same precinct are held to a more exacting standard. On first impression, it might seem that to focus extra attention on the state's scientific evidence would only serve to further damn a person suspected of DUI. But as previously indicated, the procedures mandated by NHTSA for administering the three standard FST's are exacting and complex. More likely than not, the arresting officer in any particular case will not have performed each test exactly as required by the NHTSA standard in spite of his training. It is in the contrast between the detailed procedures required by NHTSA and the methods actually employed by the arresting officer in administering the FST's to the DUI suspect that reasonable doubt lies.
THE NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION'SFIELD SOBRIETY TESTS
For each of the standard NHTSA tests, a good DUI lawyer will want to address point by point, the inadequacies of the officers instructions, demonstration, administration and scoring. Each test will be discussed below.