In order to be convicted of a Pennsylvania DUI, the police must have reasonable suspicion to pull you out of the vehicle to conduct field sobriety tests. At the police academy officers are trained to look for clues that you are intoxicated. The clues clues usually are: strong odor of alcohol, glassy eyes and slurred speech. The police always write these clues down in their police report to cover themselves in court. Like clockwork, every DUI police report I ever read said "there was a strong odor of alcohol coming from the vehicle, the defendant had glassy eyes and slurred speech." In the legal world this is what lawyers call "boiler plate" language. Boiler plate language means standard words put in a document to cover the author's rear end. The author puts these words in the document without even thinking about it.
In Pennsylvania DUI cases I think this "boiler plate" language is resulting in wrongful DUI convictions of Pennsylvania citizens. I don't think the police officers are lying intentionally. I don't think police officers intentionally lie in court, they just become good advocates for the Commonwealth. After all they have a lot of experience watching lawyers. I think they are merely doing what they are trained to do to cover their rear ends.
I had an example of this come up this week in the context of an underage drinking case. My client is 18 and blew a .01 in a PBT. The officer charged him with underage drinking. I took the case to trial. On the witness stand the officer testified that he smelled a strong odor of alcohol coming from the vehicle. He also wrote this in his police report. I doubt that the officer smelled a strong odor of alcohol. A .01 is like having 1 beer an hour or two ago. Unless the officer kissed my client, I don't think this could be classified this as a "strong odor of alcohol." Mouthwash could make a portable breath test read a .01. In closing arguments, I told the judge that is highly unlikely that the officer smelled a strong odor of alcohol coming from the vehicle being that the BAC was a .01 and pointed out that this is boiler plate language by the officer. That case is still pending a verdict.
How do we remedy this problem? It is in the judges hands. The judges should take this boiler plate language with a grain of salt unless the judge actually believes the officer's testimony.
Contact Jason R. Antoine, PA DUI Lawyer if you have been wrongfully asked to submit to field sobriety testing based on this boiler plate language. My office will fight these allegations contained in the officer's police report.
