Building a Defense For Maryland Driving While Impaired Charges
If you have been charged with driving while impaired or another DUI related offense in Maryland, the following is what you need to know about the steps involved in building a defense. To get started on your case, call and schedule a consultation with a Maryland DWI lawyer today.
Steps to Building a Defense
The first thing that needs to be done when building a defense is an assessment of the different elements of a DUI and whether the state can prove each and every one of these elements through the evidence that they have. An attorney will want to review the evidence to see if they can establish that your client was the one operating the vehicle, and whether they can establish that the defendant had a substantial level of impairment that would have impacted his or her level of coordination. A step-by-step analysis is a good place to start to ensure that each of the elements can be proven.
The next step is evaluating the officer’s investigation from a constitutional viewpoint and determining whether any of the defendant’s rights were violated while trying to gather evidence, and whether the police officer did everything that is required under the law in order to obtain evidence legally. For a DWI charge to be legal, there needs to have been a legal basis to stop the defendant’s car among other requirement.
Building a Defense For An MVA Hearing
In the case of an MVA hearing, it is important to see that the officer did everything that they were supposed to do in order to get the defendant to take the breath test. While doing this it is necessary to also make sure that you stay on top of the most recent appellate cases that come out regarding DUI charges.
There are many constitutional rights that apply to a defendant in the case like this. The 4th, 5th, 6th Amendments are applicable to DUI cases and so it’s important to stay on top of the current case law to see if anything that was done in my client’s case, has been ruled illegal by the court of the appellate courts.
That is essentially what an attorney will do when trying to prepare a defense for my client.
Other Important Factors in DWI Cases
Some of the important factors that an attorney will look at from the very beginning are when an officer made contact with the defendant and whether there was a legal basis to stop the car. In addition, did the officer have a legally sufficient basis to ask my client to get out of the car and to ask the person to take field sobriety test? An attorney will also be looking to see if the defendant made any statements related to the DUI. If they did make statements, should he have been advised of his Miranda rights or was it not applicable at the time that my client was being questioned?
It’s also important to look at the case and make sure that if he or she took a blood alcohol test that the police who administered the test made sure my client knew the rules and requirements that are agreed upon before taking the test. Was the test conducted in the manner required by the Maryland law and COMAR? There are so many factors that have to be looked at basically on a step by step basis all the way through from the moment that my client was stopped to the point where my client was issued citations . You have to look at every single piece of that and make sure that the State did what they were supposed to do in order to put a case together against my client.