DUI Attorney: How much time passed between your stop and breath test?
The cop stopped you for whatever reason, and smelled alcohol on your breath. He did his investigation and arrested you for DUI. In Hillsborough or Pinellas County, he took you back to “central breath testing”, observed you for at least twenty minutes, and finally, asked you to submit to a Breath Test. You cooperated. You blew into the machine. You could not speak to a Tampa DUI Attorney .
The results were high. Higher than a .08. Higher than the “legal limit”. A feeling of dread over takes you. Hope is lost, right?
Not necessarily. Because assuming for the sake of argument that breath test machine was working and got a true result, the resulting BAC could only be a valid measurement of the alcohol going through your veins at the time of the test.
But DUI is driving under the influence. It is not sitting in central breath testing under the influence.
How much time has passed between the moment the officer stopped you and the moment you actually blew into the machine? An hour? An Hour and a half? Two hours? Even Longer?
What is clear is that the more time that passes between the moment that officer seized you and the moment you blew into the machine, the more meaningless the results of the breathalyzer becomes. It has to do with the rate of absorption of the alcohol into the blood stream.
Alcohol does not enter your blood stream the moment you ingest it. Rather, it goes down to your stomach where it is slowly broken down and absorbed. The speed of absorption is dependent on multiple factors such as age, general health and fitness, metabolism, and the other contents of the stomach at the time of ingestion.
So there is a period of time after ingestion of a particular quantity of alcohol where your BAC steadily rises to its peak BAC. Then, as the body processes the alcohol, the amount of alcohol then lowers until eventually there is no more alcohol in the system. It generally takes around an hour after ingestion for alcohol to hit its peak BAC.
Imagine the following situation: A driver knows its last call, pounds a couple of beers, then gets in his car to drive to his home, five minutes away. That driver may have a BAC under .08 when he gets in his car. He may have continued to have a BAC under .08 as he drives home. He may have made it home and into bed with a BAC under a .08. However, his BAC may continue to rise after he got into bed, until it reaches a peak level that may have been in excess of .08.
What if that driver was stopped and ultimately arrested for DUI? If an hour passed between the time he was driving and the time the blows were obtained, his breath test results may be significantly higher than what they were at the time he was driving.
It is difficult to tell one way or the other. Your Tampa DUI Attorney may attempt to higher an expert in to try to quantify what the BAC would have been at the time of driving based on what the BAC was at the time of the blow. Alternatively, your Tampa Criminal Attorney may choose to dismiss the results of the test as unreliable because of the length of time between the driving and the breath results. That decision is one that must be made on a case by case basis, taking into account the particular facts of your case.
