Miranda Rights and Drunken Driving Investigations
Or, how invoking your right to remain silent can be the difference between a year in jail or no jail at all.
As a dui defense attorney will tell you, the little things can matter just as much as the big things in a DUI case. And that’s because the exclusionary rule in criminal law can mean that evidence of guilt, no matter how damning, can be excluded if the cops ‘do something wrong’. Most of the time ‘doing something wrong’ means a fourth amendment violation, or an unreasonable search or seizure (think a police officer stopping a car for no reason). But other times, the “something wrong” can be continuing to question a DUI suspect after Miranda is read. If this happens, the dui lawyer can ask the Judge to throw out any statements or confessions made after Miranda is read. And that can be the difference between potentially going to jail for a long time and going home with a reduced charge.
Consider the following example from a trial my office had last week:
The ‘Facts’ as we prepared for trial:
Client rear ends vehicle. Client has girl and baby in back seat. Cops come. Cops do DUI investigation on client, complete with video evidence, and arrest client. Client has a twelve pack of beer in the back of car, a pill bottle for a controlled substance, and admits to police that he has taken controlled substances. Client tests positive for four controlled substances in his urine, and blows a .007 into the machine.
The other ‘Facts” that made all the difference.
Client was not driving when the cops came to the scene. It was clients car, and he admitted to multiple officers that he was the driver both during the accident investigation and the during the police investigation. Importantly though, the admission made after the investigation began was made after client invoked Miranda. The officer continued with field sobriety exercises (which he can do), but during the exercises, client admitted after questioning that he was the driver.
Pretrial Motions: Excluding Statements
Now, going into the morning of trial, the State Attorney thought the main defense was that our client was not impaired. And truthfully, that was one of the defenses. We had hired a toxicologist to come in and explain to the jury that urine results were meaningless, and the client was not guilty of DUI. But what the State took for granted was that it could prove the client was driving the vehicle. Or, what the State likes to call, having a “wheel witness”. And the State did not have that. All the State had was the client’s admissions and other very circumstantial evidence (it was the client’s car, for example).
So, we asked the Court to exclude both statements by the client admitting to driving. The first statement was made during an accident investigation. Florida has a statutory privilege keeping statements made by a driver of a vehicle to a cop as part of an accident investigation from hurting them in court if the statements were elicited premiranda. So the first admission was out.
But the second one? Well, the cop knew he had to read Miranda to the defendant on scene because he needed to end the accident investigation to build his criminal case. However, in this case, the client said “No” when asked if he would like to speak to the cop. He invoked his right (a surprising rarity).
The Judge then agreed that Miranda was violated, and tossed that admission too. So what happened to the State’s case? Now, there was very limited evidence placing the defendant behind the wheel of the vehicle. Without a wheel witness or statements by the defendant, the State was in a tough position. Proceed to trial, and the Judge may through the whole thing out. So what happened?
State was asking for 90 days in jail and a third time DUI conviction. We negotiated a reduction to a reckless driving and no time in jail. This made the state happy, because they got something. And the client was happy; because the trial was stressful enough and he didn’t want to take the risk the Jury did not like him and convicted him. In other words, because the client invoked his right to remain silent, he got a reckless driving and no jail. Had he admitted to driving, he would have had to take his chances in front of a Jury. And sometimes, the safe play is the best play.
