Victory Lap: Leading the Pack and Finishing Strong
We've said it before, and we'll say it again -- we only post a fraction of our DWI victories on this website. We're primarily attorneys, not website developers, and we know that no matter how hard we work, we can always find a way to be more creative, more aggressive, and craft new ways to help our clients out of a bad situation.
Winning a DWI case for our clients in MInnesota means leaving no stone unturned, learning from our mistakes, and turning a negative situation into a positive one. Sometimes that means we have to take a bad prior case, turn it on its head, and create a new defense for both our current clients and future clients. There's nothing we like more than blazing a trail into uncharted territory,.
We've had three of those types of cases recently, and we're gonig to share them here over the next couple weeks:
1. Under the Minnestoa Constitution, every driver has (or should have) the right to consult with an attorney before submitting to an alcohol test. This usually involves little more than giving that driver a phone book and access to a telephone -- but if law enforcement don't meet that minimal obligation, the test results can be entirely thrown out. We had a situation where the driver WAS given a phone book, and WAS given a telephone . . . but still successfully argued that his right to counsel was violated.
2. We've been fighting for over a decade to uphold scientific standards in the courtroom, despite the government's best efforts to push back. Our attorneys have more credentials than many scientists, and we've built up our repuation as the firm you want defending you when you're facing a blood, breath, or urine test. It's been a long, hard process, but we've finally turned the corner, and are seeing more and more success challenging Minnesota's highly inaccurate breath tests, despite bad laws that try to claim that breath tests are "close enough for government work."
3. The United States Supreme Court keeps trying to water-down the protections afforded all drivers -- even drivers who are alleged to be driving while impaired. But we keep pushing back, trying to protect our client's rights and turning that fight into a way of winning their case.
Stay tuned; we'll share these three victories as we wrap up this chilly November, and in the process explain how the old case law -- case law that would have kept many attorneys from raising these defenses at all -- can be turned on its head and used to your advantage.
PART I: BEATING BREATH TESTS THAT ARE OVER TWICE THE LEGAL LIMIT