BASIC FACTS:  Driver stopped in a DWI roadblock on a New Hampshire Highway.  After police officer approaches her window and demands her license and registration, the officer reported that he smelled an “obvious odor of alcohol” coming from inside her car.  Upon speaking with the driver, the officer claimed he could tell the smell was coming from the driver’s breath.  The officer questioned the driver and she told him that she had three drinks.  The officer then waived the defendant’s car into a “screening area” for a battery of breakdown-lane gymnastics known as “field sobriety tests”.  On her way to the screening area the defendant ran over some of the orange cones that marked the “screening area”.

The officer ordered the defendant to get out of the car to take field sobriety tests.  The defendant agreed to take the sobriety tests.  The officer claimed that the defendant had to “lean on her car for balance” when she got out to do her field sobriety tests.  The driver performed the standard set of roadside gymnastics:  the “follow-the-pen test”, the “heel to toe test” and the “one-leg-stand test”.  The driver predictably failed all three sobriety tests.  The officer eventually arrested the driver and charged her with DWI.

At the police station, the defendant agreed to take a breath and blew a .13 twice.

DEFENSE STRATEGY:       An attack on the roadblock itself as unconstitutional.  Attorney Stevens moved to suppress all the evidence in the case because the defendant’s constitutional right to be free from illegal searches and seizures was violated, and that the roadblock was illegal.  The defense motion urged the Court to find that since the roadblock was illegal, all the evidence obtained in the roadblock must be suppressed or excluded.  Once the evidence was excluded, the defendant’s case must be dismissed.

RESULT:       MOTION TO SUPPRESS GRANTED.  CASE DISMISSED!

Attorney Stevens thanks God for this successful defense!!!