Beat Virginia DWI Due to the Time
Video Transcription
Hello my name is Andrew Flusche. I’m a Virginia traffic and
DUI attorney. You might can beat your Virginia DUI solely based
on time. If you’re arrested for DUI and then submit to a breath
or blood sample, in order to use the certificate of analysis
against you in the court, the Commonwealth has to fulfill what’s
called the implied consent statute, and basically what that
requires is several things. One of which is a lawful arrest for
DUI within three hours of the actual offense. So what does that
mean? Basically it means that the officer must arrest you, which
typically involves some type of laying of a hand on you and
announcing that you’re under arrest within three hours of when
you actually operated the vehicle. In many cases this isn’t an
issue because the officer pulled you over for speeding or
something, then does a little bit of roadside testing and then
decides he’s going to arrest you and put you in cuffs. Now
typically that happens well within the three-hour rule. The
cases where it gets interesting and we certainly can have some
kind of argument is usually when there’s an accident involved or
maybe if there was some type of citizen call about your driving
and the officer didn’t actually observe the driving. Then it can
be challenging for the Commonwealth to prove when the actual
driving occurred and that the arrest occurred within three hours
of that time, and that’s where there can be fruitful ground for
us to suppress the breath or blood certificate and if that
happens you could be looking at victory for your Virginia DUI.
