 Today, I want to talk about two things. Police officers using coercion to get you to do field variety exercises and the nexus required to request a urine sample in a standard DUI case and how that may make the urine results admissible. That's up next. So I want to change up the format today and talk about a case that I had this morning. I'll say hypothetically that I had a case this morning and a motion to suppress that I had set. Now, the facts of this hypothetical situation are that a guy was pulled over by a small town police department. They requested me to do field sobriety exercises. It smelled like alcohol at all the traditional signs. A weird driving pattern, odor of alcohol, bloodshot eyes. Officer claims slurred speech. I don't hear slurred speech in the video. Anyways, request that he perform field sobriety exercises and my guy says, well, I don't want to. And the officer then says, well, if you don't do the field sobriety exercise, one, I'm going to arrest you and two, your license will be suspended for a year. And that is factually inaccurate in Florida. That's not what happens. I know some of you have posted in comments before that different states may have different laws. I don't know the other laws in other states. In Florida, you can refuse to do field sobriety exercises and there's no adverse consequence besides having that refusal used against you in court. Your lack of operation, they use the consciousness of guilt argument. But that doesn't mean your license is suspended. Now, when this guy, when the officer tells my guy if you don't do the field sobriety exercises, your license will be suspended. That is using coercive techniques in order to get the client or the defendant to comply with the roadside sobriety exercises. Now, today, here's the gig. The state hadn't produced the video and then today for the motion to suppress, I had no idea this video exists. We walk in for the motion and they say, hey, we found out there's this video that exists. I had two additional videos, but this one wasn't disclosed. So this afternoon, the state attorney's office fords me the video and I list the video and it's great for my client because I didn't know about this coercion issue until I watched the video. So we had a pretty strong case on the getting the urine thrown out before, but now we have this additional issue of the coercion. And the case law is pretty clear that when a police officer uses a misapplication of the law to get you to comply with sobriety tests, that those sobriety tests are inadmissible in court. Now, this doesn't mean the whole case is thrown out. It just means that the roadside sobriety exercise, all the balance issues that you may have or when you step from the line or when they look at your eyes, those will not be allowed for the jury to hear. And when those get thrown out, it makes it extremely difficult for the state to prove their case against you because now the state's gonna be limited to evidence of, well, everything you saw during the stop. The eyes were glassy in bloodshot, the odor, oak containers were an oak container, it was this particular case, but those types of things. So that will still be admissible. Let's see if I can fix this lighting here. Sorry about the lighting. But that'll still be admissible on the stake and technically still go to four with trial on that. It's just gonna be a lot less evidence for them to use. Now, there was another issue that I was prepared to argue here is after they arrested my guy, he blew a .05, blow a .08, it was a .055 or something like that. Two breast samples both below the legal limit. Now, I think I've done a previous video, I'll link to that in the comments or I'll link to that actually on this video that explains how you can still be found guilty of DUI even if you blow below the legal limit. This is one of those cases. But in this particular case, the officer requested that my guy submit to a urine test to look for the presence of drugs in the system. And marijuana showed up. So that doesn't help us much at all because now the state's gonna argue not only was he under the influence of alcohol at a .05, but he was also under the influence of marijuana. And we all know, or most people should know, I would say that marijuana stays in your system for a lot longer than 24 hours. So just because it was in a system that night doesn't mean he was smoking weed that night. And in fact, there was no evidence to show that he was smoking that weed that night. The only evidence of drug use that night was the marijuana in his system. There was no odor of marijuana, there was no admission to smoking marijuana, there was no weed found in the car, there was no roaches, there was nothing, no evidence of marijuana or drug use at all. So the argument goes like this. In order for an officer to request a urine test, they have to have reasonable suspicion to believe that the person was driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of a chemical or controlled substance. So it's not just that they're blow low, there has to be something else in addition to that to suggest that drugs were involved. Now this can be done in several different ways. The admission to smoking weed, the admission of drug use, if you have a triple zero blow but you're falling down high or you're falling down drunk and it's an inconsistent result with the breath alcohol level. But in this particular case, my guy doesn't do perfect on the field sobriety exercises but he's definitely not a falling down drunk. So the argument is this, there's no reasonable suspicion for the officer to even suspect drugs were involved. And so therefore the marijuana or the urine results that show marijuana should be suppressed as well. And just like with the field sobriety test refusal, just because I win this issue, doesn't mean that the case is thrown out automatically. It's just one of those additional factors that comes into play that cuts away at the state's evidence. Now at the end of the day, I think what's gonna happen is the state's gonna look at this and give a sweetheart deal. And now my guy's gonna be in a difficult position of, do I accept this sweetheart deal that's still a criminal charge or do I push this onto trial? And that's a decision he'll have to make. I mean, I'll help make the decision. I'll give him my thoughts on it but it really comes down to what he wants to risk because if he's found guilty at trial with that limited evidence, I don't think it's very likely that he will be found guilty but if he is found guilty, the full punishments of DUI are on the table. That's gonna happen. All the judication, the DUI schools, everything associated with DUI is still gonna come into effect. Anyways, hope you enjoy the video. Like this new format, give me a thumbs up, leave a comment. If you want some more case updates or hypothetical case updates as they may be, then I'd like to do that. Have a good one. God bless.