In a must-win situation, our medical professional client faced a nightmare situation, where the incident report looked awful at first glance. Our client was found in a compromising situation on I-75 late one rainy night. Her car suddenly lost power while driving on I-75 in Clayton County, Georgia. She was able to navigate her disabled car almost fully into the left emergency lane of I-75. Naturally, someone called 911 and claimed that a driver was all over the road, was partially parked in the fast-lane, and was likely drunk. Unfortunately, at that same time our client urgently needed to urinate. Because of her location on the interstate she was unable to get out of her car, so she grabbed a cup and did her best. Adding insult to injury, the cup of urine spilled all over her pants. Instead of pulling up her soaked pants, she decided to sit with her pants down until help arrived. While waiting, she fell asleep. What occurred next is a prime example of why it is important to investigate your Clayton County DUI case.
- The Clayton County officer documented that he tried to wake our client up for five minutes. Our investigation revealed that to be a gross exaggeration.
- The officer documented that he was able to simultaneously observe our client’s front and rear private areas—while she was sitting down.
- The officer documented that our client had difficulty standing up while walking. Our investigation yielded dash-camera footage showing she walked fine.
- The officer documented that our client admitted to drinking “2-3 drinks,” despite that statement being nowhere on the video.
- The officer documented that he did not ask our client to perform any field sobriety evaluations due to “safety concerns.” Our investigation revealed that he moved our client to a much safer location where the evaluations could have been performed, and we also uncovered the likely real reason—that the arresting officer was not trained in field sobriety testing.
- Lastly, when the officer arrested our client for her Clayton County DUI, the officer failed to properly read the Georgia implied consent notice—twice—which resulted in the suppression of our client’s refusal to take the state administered breath test.
We prepared for a jury trial in Clayton County State Court on the seven-count accusation, and planned to call multiple rebuttal witnesses to tell the real version of events. When the Clayton County Police officer failed to show up on the morning trial, the prosecutor had no choice but to dismiss the entire case.