When you are arrested for a DUI, your DUI attorney Seattle WA will review the information about your arrest in order to determine if you have any possible ways to defend yourself. One issue your DUI attorney Seattle WA will consider is whether there was sufficient probable cause.
Understanding Probable Cause
When you speak with a DUI attorney Seattle WA, your lawyer is going to ask you about why you were pulled over, and about when and why the law enforcement officer decided to conduct a sobriety test. When your DUI attorney Seattle WA asks these questions, the purpose is to determine whether the police had probable cause for their actions.
Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, you have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizures. As your DUI attorney Seattle WA will explain to you, a search is unreasonable if it is conducted by law enforcement without probable cause. In other words, unless the law enforcement officer had a reasonable suspicion that you were breaking the law, he or she cannot search you.
Being pulled over is a form of “seizure,” so a law enforcement agent must have probable cause to pull you over in the first place. If you weren’t breaking a traffic law, driving erratically or otherwise doing something that suggested wrongdoing, then your DUI attorney Seattle WA may be able to argue that the police officer pulled you over without probable cause. In this instance, your DUI lawyer Seattle WA could potentially have any evidence collected against you after you were improperly pulled over thrown out as “fruit of the poison tree” (i.e. evidence collected from a bad search).
If you were pulled over for a legitimate reason, the law enforcement officer would still have needed to have probable cause before requiring a sobriety test. If you didn’t give indications you were intoxicated, your DUI attorney Seattle WA can also argue that there was no probable cause for testing your sobriety. This, again, can help you get evidence thrown out in your DUI case.