Missouri Criminal Lawyers Blog

Everyone knows that DWI laws make it illegal to drive while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. There's a very clear line for measuring how much alcohol drivers are permitted to have in their system before they are deemed legally intoxicated, 0.08 percent. Something that would surprise many people in Missouri is that, in the state, you can be charged with Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) if your driving is impaired, regardless of the amount of drugs found in your system at the time of your arrest. No such clear line exists.

According to Section 577.010 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, a driver is considered guilty of driving while intoxicated if he or she drives while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The legal limit for a DWI for alcohol is 0.08, but for drugs, no specific limit exists. Instead, any amount of drugs that impairs your driving is enough for a DUID conviction.

The potential penalties for a DUID conviction are exactly the same as they are for a standard DWI in Missouri. The law says that those convicted of either crime are eligible for up to six months in prison and can be ordered to pay a fine of up to $500. Both crimes also involve the loss of driving privileges. Interestingly if you enter a plea of guilty to driving under the influence of drugs you most likely will lose your license for one year under Missouri Abuse and Lose Law.

What's so maddening about the Missouri law is that it is so arbitrary, making no attempt to define what actually is dangerous, impaired driving. It's possible that in Missouri a driver may have smoked marijuana a week before being pulled over and had a couple of beers but be under the legal limit of 0.08, but under this law he can be charged for DWI because he will likely test positive for the metabolite of THC (this is what THC becomes as it is broken down in the body). The same thing goes with other drugs as labs in the state are designed to detect drug metabolites, not the drugs themselves. Prosecutors typically don't take the time or have the knowledge to properly interpret the lab results properly. Typically if a person is charged with Driving Under the Influence of Drugs they will need to hire a toxicologist or other experts to help in their defense.

The only good thing to say about the law is that it has one caveat that prevents it from being applied too broadly by police officers. Officers in Missouri still have to have probable cause to believe that a driver was operating a vehicle under the influence before they can ask you to take a test to determine your level of intoxication.

If you've had a run in with the law and find yourself in need of a Missouri DWI defense lawyer capable of aggressively protecting your interests, contact our St. Louis DWI law firm today at (314) 863-0500.

Source: "Missouri Drugged Driving," published at NORML.org.

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If you've ever been pulled over in Missouri and asked to get out of your vehicle to perform a few simple maneuvers, then you're likely already familiar with what is known as the Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST). For those who have not yet been unlucky enough to have such an interaction, the SFST is a series of three tests performed during a traffic stop to determine if a person is driving with a blood alcohol level above the legal limit (0.08 in Missouri).

The field sobriety test was first developed back in the 1970s and has been tested so that it is admissible as evidence in a court of law. Though more basic field sobriety tests are done in certain situations, most officers rely on the SFST when a person is suspected of drinking and driving. The program was created by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which trains officers all across the country, including those here in St. Louis, on how to perform the tests.

The three parts of the SFTS are the horizontal gaze nystagmus test (HGN), the walk-and-turn (WAT) and the one-leg stand (OLS). The HGN refers to an involuntary motion of the eye that naturally happens as someone looks from side to side. When a person is sober, HGN occurs when their eyes turn horizontally. When a person is intoxicated, HGN movement is much more distinctive. Someone who is under the influence would also have a more difficult time following a moving object, such as an officer's finger.

Officers performing this test look for signs that the suspect's eyes cannot smoothly follow a moving object. Officers also check to see if the eye twitching is distinct, a good indication that the driver is intoxicated. In fact, research from the NHTSA reveals that this test, if done properly, is able to indicate intoxication correctly 77% of the time.

The next field sobriety test commonly given is the walk-and-turn test. Though the name largely explains things, there is a bit more to say. The WAT requires that the suspect listen carefully and follow instructions while performing simple movements. Drivers who are under the influence of alcohol typically have a much harder time performing tasks that require both physical and mental concentration.

The WAT involves taking nine steps, heel-to-toe, in a straight line. After walking the appropriate distance, the subject is asked to turn around on one foot and return in the same way. Officers are trained to look for lack of balance, halting steps, failure to fully listen to instructions, failure to walk heel-to-toe and improper turning. Research says that 68% of those who demonstrate two or more failures with the WAT are have a blood alcohol level above the legal limit.

Finally, the one leg stand is the field sobriety test perhaps most commonly seen in movies and on old episodes of Law & Order. This test requires that a suspect stand with one foot six inches off the ground and count aloud for approximately 30 seconds. If the subject sways, hops, or uses their arms for balance, the officer will note these as indications of intoxication. Though it may seem like this would be hard for most people to do sober, the NHTSA says that 65% of people who fail two or more indicators have a blood alcohol level greater than 0.10.

Though each test on its own is far from definitive, the NHTSA claims that research has proven the reliability of the package of tests. In fact, they claim that when each of the three tests is performed correctly, there is a combined 90% chance that officers will accurately assess a driver's level of intoxication.

If you've had a run in with the law and find yourself in need of a Missouri DWI defense lawyer capable of aggressively protecting your interests, contact our St. Louis DWI law firm today at (314) 863-0500.

Source: "Standardized Field Sobriety Testing," published at NHTSA.gov.

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Guest Author: Allison Gamble, Student of Psychology

Arrests and convictions for charges of driving under the influence are often made based on evidence from field sobriety tests. While law enforcement officers often contend these tests are foolproof, forensic psychology and the statistics show otherwise. In a substantial number of cases field sobriety tests tend to indicate individuals are intoxicated when their blood alcohol levels are still below legal limits. A revision of the way this testing is performed may be necessary to prevent wrongful DUI charges.

There are several types of field sobriety tests used, and none has proven infallible in peer-reviewed research. On the contrary, studies often reveal significant problems with these tests. The horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN) test looks for involuntary eye movements as an individual is told to look at a certain point in space. Even the US Department of Transportation states this test only accurately detects intoxicated people 88 percent of the time. A separate study performed by Maryland law enforcement officers found it was only accurate 79 percent of the time, and about one third of subjects below the legal blood alcohol limit were wrongly identified as intoxicated using this test.

Another common way to detect drunk drivers is with the walk and turn test, or a test involving standing on one foot. The Department of Transportation states these tests are about 79 percent and 83 percent accurate, respectively. However, critics of these methods point out the studies from which these statistics are derived were conducted by highly motivated officers specially trained to administer these tests, and who were being observed by civilian analysts. They point out that in actual roadside situations the detection rate could be much higher, and officers may be simply looking to make arrests, and so will tend to interpret cues in such a way that they will believe people are intoxicated, even if they legally aren't.

Some peer-reviewed studies have been even more critical of these tests. They state these tests are only accurate around two thirds of the time in detecting inebriated individuals, and often lead to false positives in assessing sober subjects. These studies found that only rarely were people who hadn't had anything to drink actually judged to be completely sober, even if officers didn't deem them "too drunk to drive."

Even field sobriety tests using breathalyzers aren't always accurate. The Department of Transportation has stated these devices accurately detect blood alcohol content about 91 percent of the time. Accordingly, all else being equal breathalyzer detections will be incorrect almost one time in ten. Moreover, depending on the skill of officers in administering other field sobriety tests and properly gauging subjects' responses, individuals could still easily be wrongly arrested for DUIs. When the only completely reliable determination of blood alcohol content is a blood test, being exonerated after the fact is impossible.

The tests currently used to evaluate sobriety in the field have unacceptably high false positive rates, and don't always detect intoxicated individuals consistently enough to be considered reliable. Often officers' own motivations, experiences, and beliefs regarding the people they're testing will lead to arrests more than testing does. Until more accurate field tests of blood alcohol levels are available, the results of these tests should always be supplemented by actual blood testing in order to absolutely prove someone has been drinking and driving.

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