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Pittsburgh DUI/DWI DEFENSE - Hiring a DUI/DWI

By (Breaking Legal News)

Pittsburgh DUI Defense Lawyer

Just as you wouldn?t hire your family doctor to perform brain surgery, you should be very careful when selecting an attorney to defend you if you?ve been charged with DUI. With the continuing emphasis on DUI in the media and the trend toward increased penalties, even for first time offenders with a low blood-alcohol concentration (?BAC?), it is important that you choose an attorney knowledgeable in all areas of DUI law. It might be ok to hire a ?jack-of-all trades? attorney to sell your house or write your will, but you may want to think twice about this when your freedom is potentially at stake.

There are defenses available to almost every set of facts in a DUI case, depending upon the specific type of evidence in each case. The trick is knowing what to look for and how to use those facts in creating a defense to the allegation of driving under the influence. Questions to think about are: did the officer have cause to stop you, cause to have you perform field sobriety tests, and cause to take you for a chemical test? Were the field sobriety tests valid? Do they have any correlation to intoxication? Was the officer trained in the field sobriety tests that you performed? Did the officer inform you about the implied consent rule? Was the breath machine used to test you calibrated? Was the officer who gave the test trained and certified to give you the breath test (which is required)? Do you have any medical problems that might have impacted your performance on field sobriety tests or influenced your BAC reading? Of course, this information in the hands of an attorney that does not know how to evaluate it is useless.

Another important piece of evidence that will be used against you is the police report. In addition to the countless police reports that I wrote over my 15-year police career, I also spent 7 years as a lieutenant reading and approving thousands upon thousands of police reports. This is a critical piece of evidence that will be used against you in your case.

http://www.gbmlawpittsburgh.com/dui-defense

Full post as published by Breaking Legal News on February 19, 2010 (boomark / email).