LAUNDRY WOES

I represented a young lady who got into an accident downtown Chapel Hill right in front of a police officer. She ran into a concrete barrier with two policeman only about 50 feet away. They heard the noise and turned around and immediately went to the scene of the crash. At the scene they immediately became aware that she was intoxicated and asked her to do several field sobriety tests and a portable breath test. After she performed very poorly on those tests they arrested her and took her downtown where she tested nearly twice the legal limit. In that case the State had some problems getting both of the police witnesses to court at the same time. I was instrumental in having the case continued for a while in the hopes that something in the State's airtight case would fall apart. My plan worked and the second policeman on the scene who was actually the arresting officer put his notebook in with his wash and all of his notes got erased. Because we had managed to continue the case for a long time, he could not remember how my client performed on the field sobriety tests though he was certain that she performed poorly. I argued that without the details of that performance the police officer should not have been allowed to arrest her. The Judge agreed with me and suppressed all the evidence gathered after the arrest which included the intoximeter test that she took at the station. Without that evidence there was not enough evidence to convict her and the Judge found her not guilty.