The State of Arizona Has a High Volume of DUI Arrests

(The content below was transcribed from an interview done with Acacia Law. We think you'll find it much easier
and more enjoyable to read this way.)

Interviewer: Do you know offhand how many DUI arrests, ballpark, are made in Arizona in a year or in a month?

Acacia Law: I don’t off the top of my head. I’m sure it’s an extremely high number just from the volume of people who contact me about them. There are certain figures that can be obtained from the Department of Motor Vehicles as well as NHTSA, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration probably has statistics on that. I know the state of Arizona has statistics on that but what the exact numbers are I don’t know. It’s just a very, very common every day kind of crime so I’m sure that whatever the number is it must run in the thousands per year in Arizona alone.

Have You Been Charged with a DUI? Why It Is Important to Contact An Attorney

Interviewer: What are some of the reasons do you think that people would be afraid to talk to an attorney if they’ve been arrested for a DUI? What do you think the hesitations or fears are?

Acacia Law: Some due to embarrassment, others due to the fact that they honestly don’t know what their rights are. They see the charges. They assume they’re guilty immediately. They don’t even make the state produce their blood alcohol readings to see if they’re even over the limit.

The prosecutors are happy to oblige them and just let them plead guilty. This is because: They don’t have to produce any evidence of it and the person is willing to plead to it and since you have that catch-all provision, that 1381 which says, ‘By the consumption of alcohol and or drugs I was impaired to the slightest degree regardless what I had in my system,’ the court will find a factual basis. Why do they do it? I think a lot of times they assume there’s nothing that can be done out of the gate.

Interviewer: How defensible is your average DUI case? Are there a lot of defenses or are they pretty hard to fight?

Acacia Law: There are a slew of defenses. It’s a question of the person coming in to retain in order for an attorney to expend the resources to research it. There is no simple answer. Every case is different. Every time somebody comes in with a fact pattern, there are different issues I’m looking at, what I’m trying to explore, and what I see as potential defences.

I don’t know what will be available to us because I haven’t seen all the documentation and discovery. I have to examine everything from the machines; how they’re calibrated, up to the officer’s experience; whether they have any special training, whether they’ve been certified to administer the HGN test or the other field sobriety test to what was the basis of the stop? Was there any probable cause for it? Was there any reasonable suspicion that could be developed?

We even retest the samples of blood that are drawn. That’s why everyone who has blood drawn in these cases has two vials that are taken. One that the state has, one that they preserve for the defendant and his attorney so that we can retest the exact same sample of blood that was drawn at the exact same time as the other one.

When defending a DUI case, we have many resources to build a good defense and many ways to attack the state’s evidence.