The weaving issue in DUI cases

car weaving

There has been a large amount of case law which discusses whether or not a police officer is legally justified in pulling over a driver who is weaving - and then discovering that the driver is under the influence or over the legal limit.   If a DUI defense lawyer can prove to the judge that the weaving was not that bad, then the whole DUI will essentially get dismissed.   Therefore,  many DUI defense lawyers will argue that the weaving was not sufficient enough to give the officer "reasonable suspicion" to believe that the driver was committing a traffic offense - specifically a "marked lanes" violation.   Many of the opinions issued by courts of appeals focus on how close to (or over) the lane line the car traveled.  If the car just weaved within its lane or just slightly touched either lane lines, many courts will conclude that this type of weaving is not enough.  In that regard, dash cam videos (if they are available) have become more and more important to analyze in order to see just how much weaving was going on. We constantly analyze court opinions to try and gauge where the courts are going on this issue.  Some courts of appeals judges (there are three for each appeal) will often disagree with each other in the actual written opinion.  That is why there are three judges instead of two - can't have a tie on these opinions.

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Another DUI trial result

One of the things that Mr. O'Shea does in his practice is his part time city prosecutor job.  In that regard, Mr. O'Shea is called upon to prosecute DUIs that occur in his home city of Rocky River.    A number of times each year he has to take a case to trial.   In that last 3 years, he has had to try 5 DUI cases as a city prosecutor - and has been successful each time (including this past week).  Each of those cases involved ONLY the presentation of testimony of officers who conducted field sobriety tests (often called "FSTs") - with no evidence of blood alcohol presented to the jury.  Each time he sees different techniques used by defense lawyers to attempt to gain a not guilty verdict.  At this point he has seen just about everything.   Some techniques work (to some degree) and some do not.  With each trial Mr. O'Shea gains more experience in the presentation of DUI testimony and the cross-examination on that testimony.    Mr. O'Shea believes that this actual trial experience (as well as the many many "hearings" he has litigated) in the DUI prosecution/defense world significantly helps his overall understanding of Ohio's DUI law and the proper techniques in both defending (Mr. O'Shea defends DUI cases outside of the Rocky River Court) and prosecuting DUI cases.