 Hi, I'm David Cantor and I'm with the Law Offices of David Michael Cantor and welcome to my blog. Today's topic is going to be DUI defenses. Now DUI defenses, a lot of people ask me, what defenses are there if I gave a blood or breath test? I've been stopped, I've got the ticket, now I'm here to see you. What can I do? Well the defenses are numerous and they're diverse. First, there's no actual physical control. What does that mean? Under Arizona law you have to actually be operating a motor vehicle in order to be cited for DUI. People say, well I didn't feel well, I pulled off the roadway, I put my car in park but I left the engine on to run the air conditioner or the heater if it's wintertime. Gosh, was I an actual physical control? The answer is no. Under the law, if you voluntarily relinquish control and you merely use it as stationary shelter, that being your car, you have a defense. Another defense, no reasonable suspicion to stop, was I stopped because I was merely pulling out of a bar late at night where I was the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood. That is one of the elements we look for. Another defense that we look for is no, our denial of right to counsel. Once you said, look, I want to call my lawyer, they don't let you call a lawyer or give you a phone and a phone book while you're in custody. That reading can be suppressed and the whole case can be thrown out. Why? Because we would have told you, hey, get an independent blood test. But your body has burned off that evidence by the time you see us, we can never regain that opportunity. And that's why if there's denial of right to counsel, that's an issue. No private phone call. You do call a lawyer and we say, hey, ask the officer for a private phone call. Officer, can you leave the room? No, I can't leave the room because the machine is next to you. It's our policy. We don't let you alone with the breath testing device. Well, that's a defense. It has a chilling effect. We cannot talk to you in depth because you may say such things as, well, I had X amount to drink or I maybe took a smoke something or took some drugs. So we're not going to ask you questions that will promote a verbal response in front of the officer. But that is a defense to the charge. Breath testing flaws. Machines break all the time. We get the standard quality assurance procedure, the 31-day records, the 90-day records. And we will comb through those records. Blood testing devices, same thing. Fermentation within the blood creates alcohol. That's a defense. They call those microbials. We also look for coagulants. If the anti-coagulant powder in the bottom of the vial didn't work and there's a blood clot, believe it or not, the solid does not contain alcohol and it raises the alcohol reading in the rest of the blood that's left in the vial. That's a defense. We will actually go out and look at the vial and hire an expert who will retest that blood. Some of the other oddball defenses, as we call them, come down to some constitutional issues on the timing. Did they wait too long before they charged you? Did they give you a blood destruction notice? Well, they didn't charge you sometimes up to a year later. And since that time, the second vial of blood that they keep so you can analyze it independently gets destroyed. So there are many, many, many defenses to a DUI. They can be beat. We routinely beat them. And that's why you need to give us a call so we can help you out on these.