DWI Dismissed Against Driver Passed Out in Middle of Road

DWI Charges

Our Hoboken DWI defense attorneys recently represented a client who was arrested for drunk driving and DWI in a School Zone after Hoboken Police found him passed out unconscious behind the wheel in the middle of the road around 5:44 A.M. Upon approaching the car the police noticed all the doors were locked and there was loud music blasting from inside the car. According to their report, the police could see our client seated inside with his eyes closed but he was completely unresponsive to their commands and it actually took them several minutes of knocking on the windows and physically shaking the car to wake our client from his slumber.

When he finally woke up and rolled down the window, the police smelt an odor of alcoholic beverages emanating from inside the car. According to the report, after speaking with the police, he appeared to be disoriented and did not know where he was at first. The police also noted that he had slow speech and glassy eyes. Based on the circumstances, an ambulance had been called to make sure our client did not need medical attention. When they asked him to step out of the car to be checked by the EMTs he was also observed to be stumbling and had to be guided with the assistance of the medical personnel. Lastly, he was heard making open admissions to the EMTs that he had been consuming alcohol throughout the night.

Based on these observations, the police arrested our client for DWI and DWI in a School Zone and transported him to the police station where he was administered the breathalyzer which showed he was in fact above the legal limit. This was our client’s first time in trouble and he was obviously very distraught about the situation, especially since he faced up to a 2 year loss of his driver’s license, if convicted. In order to challenge the State’s case against him, our defense lawyers began combing through the evidence looking for inconsistencies or potential issues with the police officer’s procedures and the breathalyzer machine itself. Based on the information we uncovered, we brought in a retired state trooper breath test coordinator, as a DWI expert, to challenge the validity of the breathalyzer reading. In the end, our attorneys made a motion to dismiss based on the deficiencies in the State’s evidence and the court dismissed both the DWI and DWI in the School Zone against our client.

State v. G.S. decided on October 24, 2017 resulted in Reckless Driving with 60 day loss of license