Awkward Attempts to Save Face After a DUI Traffic Stop
After midnight on a weekend last month, a car had its high beams on as it drove down Gulf of Mexico Drive on Longboat Key. A police cruiser flashed its lights, and the car pulled over. The driver of the car got out and moved to the backseat. By the time the police car stopped, a woman was in the driver’s seat; she had moved there from the front passenger seat after the car stopped. She told police that she had been driving the whole time, but then she changed her story and said that the man in the backseat had been the one driving. Police asked the man in the backseat to get out of the car and noticed that he seemed unsteady on his feet. An officer asked the man if he had been drinking, and he at first said that he had drunk a can of beer and then changed his story to say that he had drunk a glass of wine. The officer asked the man to perform field sobriety tests, but the man refused, so the officer arrested him. By the time the Auto Wire news website published its report on the case, no information was available about which charges he was facing or whether the woman who had been his passenger faced any criminal charges. Here, our Miami criminal defense lawyer explains the legal issues surrounding the recent Florida traffic stop and the vehicle occupants’ awkward attempts to talk their way out of trouble.
Refusing a Breath Test Is a Crime According to Florida Law
The news report about the man on Longboat Key who pretended, unconvincingly, that he had not been driving before the traffic stop did not say whether he underwent a breath test, as is part of the standard protocol for traffic stops where officers suspect that DUI is involved. If he did refuse a breath test, he could face a criminal charge just for that.
In October 2025, Florida enacted a law whereby refusing to take a breath test at a traffic stop is a criminal misdemeanor, separate from any DUI charges you might receive. You can be convicted of refusal to take a breath test and acquitted of the DUI charge and the other way around.
The breath tests that traffic cops in Florida and other states have been using for several decades measure a person’s blood alcohol content (BAC) based on the concentration of alcohol metabolites in the person’s breath. In Florida a BAC of 0.08 percent is considered DUI, but you can get criminal charges if your BAC is slightly lower than that if you drive after drinking alcohol when you are younger than 21. The breath test is usually the most important piece of evidence in a DUI case, making it difficult for the case to proceed without the breathalyzer results as evidence.
What Happens If You Refuse a Field Sobriety Test?
Refusing a breath test is a crime by itself, but refusing to take other field sobriety tests is not. The tests may include asking a driver to walk on a narrow line painted in a parking lot as if it were a parking lot, balance on one leg, or recite the alphabet backwards, among other tasks meant to measure whether the driver is sober. While these tests are admissible as evidence, their results leave room for reasonable doubt about the defendant’s guilt. There are plenty of reasons why someone might perform poorly on the tasks besides alcohol intoxication. For example, someone might perform poorly because of anxiety about the traffic stop or because of an underlying health condition that affects balance, and in the case of verbal tasks, the person might perform poorly because of lack of English language proficiency.
Any Traffic Violation, No Matter How Minor, Is a Valid Reason for a Traffic Stop
When criminal cases begin with a traffic stop, the defendant might try to call into question the validity of the charges, or else try to exclude certain pieces of evidence, on the basis that the police were not within their rights to initiate the traffic stop. Unfortunately, this strategy rarely works in court. Police are within their rights to initiate a traffic stop if they observed the driver breaking a traffic law, even if the infraction is so minor that it does not constitute a crime.
Contact Our Criminal Defense Attorneys
A South Florida criminal defense lawyer can help you if you are facing charges after a drunk driving traffic stop. Contact Ratzan & Faccidomo in Miami, Florida for a confidential consultation about your case.
Source:
msn.com/en-us/news/other/police-say-a-driver-stopped-for-high-beams-on-florida-s-longboat-key-climbed-into-the-back-seat-then-refused-sobriety-tests/ar-AA2dzdX5?ocid=msedgntp&pc=ACTS&cvid=6ac3bb7294b443fd99ba7aa9b9d043a1&ei=24
