David Elia Rosenbloom Esq.

Born and bred in Princeton and NYC, so I'm a little too blunt for some people, but I try to just tell it as it is.

DUI law is political, and most people do not realize just how serious DUI's are and how they are enforced in Utah. Understanding this very basic maxim is key to your success in the long term: 

       UTAH IS THE WORST STATE IN AMERICA TO RECEIVE A DUI IN!

First, let's start with how one gets a DUI. There are two basic ways; the first being drinking more than one (1) beer and then driving within two hours - that will register above a .08 on the machines the UHP and police use in Utah even though they are basically inaccurate (another story); the second however is much much more sinister and almost NO PERSON knows about it: ANY AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL OR ANY AMOUNT OF ANY DRUG AND IMPAIRMENT. Now you ask what is impairment?

Impairment is whatever the cop says it is at the time of the stop. Red eyes, failure to hand over your registration promptly, fumbling with your wallet, field tests (you should never, NEVER do), the smell of alcohol, slurred speech (even if thats the way you speak every single day). Very simply, if you admit to taking any drug or drinking any amount of alcohol, you will walk yourself into a DUI ticket that you will then have to fight no matter how unfair you think it is. Yes, the answer to your question can I get a DUI with a BAC UNDER .08 is yes, everyday of the week. I've represented clients who have BAC's of .047, and get this - .006!

 Prosecutors dont care about personal details, everyone thinks they are a great person and obviously 90% of first time DUI's have no other criminal history. Prosecutors care about whether they can win the case - that's all - and they know one thing for absolutely sure - you the defendant are not going to try your case to a jury and if you are silly enough to try they will beat you. There are no PLEAS IN ABEYANCE any more for DUI's so that tool is gone from the chest. That simple legislative device changed the rules for your choices are : try the case to a jury; plead guilty to DUI, reduce the charge to Impaired Driving - those are your choices. And remember these are Utah juries made up of republican (90%), Mormons (76%), so they don't much like DUI's to begin with.

My philosophy is this: I explain exactly how DUI enforcement works whereas everyone else seems to focus on the current DUI.

Put another way, if we take care of this DUI and it disappears off the face of the earth and you are happy, and then you go out and within the week get your plate read by an auto-plate reader in a UHP cruiser and he sees the prior arrest (which will show up even if we get totally rid of the current DUI), and he pulls you over and starts his spiel "your eyes look funny..." and you don't KNOW NOT to mention that you are taking X medication - even an OTC med, you have just walked into another DUI.

This is how SO MANY second DUi's begin. Person with a low BAC doesnt get a lawyer, pleads down to an Impiared Driving and thinks he has just saved a few thousand dollars when his case was totally winable for whatever reason (roughly 25% of cases have serious evidentiary problems and they are remarkably well buried), and then they get stopped for speeding. Cop asks one question: have you taken any medication because your eyes look funny." And although it makes me almost scream, about 99% of people will say "Oh! that's just my xyz medication that I take every day, it does make my eyes look funny!" Folks, I don't know why everybody in the world sees fit to share their personal medical history with cops, but boy do they ever do it!

Now, let me explain exactly why:

First, Utah is the ONLY state where 50% of people do not drink, and the police force is better than 80% mormon. This makes enforcement of DUI's a "zealous" occupation where ANY DUI is a good DUI. This translates into an almost rabid enforcement mechanism where cops pull over for example ANY out of state plated car to stop and sniff, largely because Utah is home to I-15 and I-70 and I-80 - one of the only states with this kind of high pass through rate to other marijuana legal states - this causes police to want to sniff out the marijuana trafficers real or imagined.

Second, nearly 90% of DUI's do not begin with a driving pattern but rather start with a routine traffic stop - that is, officers pull over everybody and anybody for a traffic infraction that might be pased on in other states just to get to a face-to-face with the driver and smell their breath and look at their eyes. There is no other state where police have the "time" or "energy" to perform such sweeping searches. Third, Utah has by far the highest rate of RX drug use/DUI's per capita compared to any other state. And almost no one appreciates that you can just as easily get a DUI by taking your prescription medication as directed, as you can get an alcohol based DUI. In some areas of Utah, RX drug DUI's outnumber alcohol DUI's!

Third, if you live in Utah I guarantee you dont know the rules that the state plays by, which is not unlike trying to play a game where you don't know the rules. This allows the State to squash people like so many bugs and literally ruin lives in the zealous enforcement of a completely political law that almost everyone sees as perfectly sane (as a country the USA hands out more than 1.4 million DUI's each year, yet the death rate from DUI's only comprises 30% of all traffic related fatalities and remains absolutely constant at about 20,000 per year; this write believes that is because DUI enforcement does nothing to counter very impaired drivers who dont take the law into account when they drive and punishes drivers who have either made a slight mistake in BAC (DUI's range primarily from .08 - .16 - far below the level needed to cause a catostrophic accident), or have made a singular one time mistake and got caught; in any case it is like trying to stop people from smoking by penalizing underage smokers - it only gets at a very small part of the problem). When you get a DUI in Utah every time you are stoipped from that time forward you are going to get the third degree and if you EVER drink any amount or take an RX drug, the stop is going to turn into a DUI investigation - guaranteed. This makes, again in this writer's estimation (and Ive handled over 1000 cases), Utah the worst place to be stopped by a cop because every cop is going to inquire about whether you have been drinking or qre taking any drug and most people will tell the truth instead of saying "wait a minute: I thought you stopped me for xyz, just give me the ticket for that or arrest me for whatever it is you think I have done illegally

BUT I"M NOT GIVING YOU EVIDENCE TO HELP WITH MY PROSECUTION!" Is that perfectly legal - ABSOLUTELY!

Does anyone do it? About one out of one hundred have the presence of mind. Why would you try to prove to a cop a negative by doing tests that you don't understand and don't have a scoring rubric for on the side of a busy road under pressure??!! NOWAY! Must you blow or give blood? IF you are arrested absoslutey give anything they ask for because if you dont they will get a warrant and they will get it anyway (and more importantly we will suppress the blood test for lack of probable cause since you didnt give the officer any evidence with which to arrest you.

Dave Rosenbloom