Broward DUI Lawyer Blog

The office recently received an advance sheet from the Fourt District Court of Appeal in Palm Beach containing the court's opinion in Estrich v. State. The Estrich case was the first case taken by the firm when it opened its doors in April 2006. This young man had the misfortune of being accused of a very serious DUI charge. He was facing many years in the state prison if he had been convicted of the main charge.

Mr. Canet engaged in an 18 month investigative and preparation process in getting the case ready for trial. The trial took place in the circuit court in West Palm Beach in front of Judge Karen Miller. The prosecutor was veteran and traffic homicide chief Ellen Roberts. The trial lasted 10 days and ended in the client being acquitted of the main charge and avoiding any real serious penalties. Instead, he was found guilty, as a first offender, of two lesser included misdemeanor charges.

Continue reading "WIN FROM APPEAL" »

In many years of practice as a DUI defense lawyer I have learned that easily the most challenging and complicated issues in any DUI case have to do with blood draws and their analysis. Especially in felony DUI cases involving death or serious bodily injury where the stakes are the highest, most often the DUI defense attorney is confronted with a blood draw performed on his client and later analyzed either in a hospital toxicology lab or a police toxicology lab.

In almost every DUI where a blood draw is done, a traffic crash had occurred. In most of these cases there are two, and sometimes three, approaches for challenging blood evidence.

The first consideration is whether the blood was lawfully obtained. An examination of the facts surrounding the draw itself is critical. In cases where there is no death or serious bodily injury and the client is conscious and appears at a facility for treatment, most often the question is whether a breath or urine test implementation was impractical or impossible. If the client is unconscious a careful examination of the facts surrounding the accident is most important to determine whether the client was at fault.

Continue reading "Blood Analysis Issues" »

The oldest law enforcement on-scene investigative tool is the administration of field sobriety exercises. There was a time before 1995 that they were referred to as "tests." However, that changed as a result of some work I did attempting to exclude their use by police altogether. I am Carlos A. Canet, South Florida DUI defense attorney.

As a Fort Lauderdale DUI attorney, in 1994 I became aware that there was a research psychologist at the Clemson University that had been doing work with local counsel attempting to mythbust FSE's. The gentleman's name was Spurgeon Cole. Dr. Cole has taken a detailed look at the research that had been done around FSE's and had written a paper discrediting their use in DUI investigations. The research he looked at had been done by the Southern California Research Institute located at the U.C. Berkley. This group was headed by a couple of research psychologists, Drs. Marceline Burns and Benjamin Tharp, who would later become legends in the field of DUI investigations. The SCRI had managed to get a grant from the federal government though the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to study the use of field sobriety exercises by cops investigating DUIs.

Continue reading "What are FSE's?" »