Hospitalized for a Valium Overdose, Released, Then got a DUI
In Virginia, you can absolutely get a DUI for prescription drugs. The law says that you cannot operate a vehicle while you are under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. Prescription drugs certainly can impair your ability to drive safely. Just because they’re legal for you to take does not mean they’re legal for you to drive after taking them.
If you’re charged with DUI in Virginia for drugs, the Commonwealth is normally going to do a blood test so they can see exactly how much of the drugs were in your system. Once they get the levels back, they can have a toxicologist testify at your trial about what those levels of that drug would do to a normal person.
If you are actually hospitalized for an overdose, it makes the case more difficult because the hospital normally advises you when you’re released not to drive. It’s going to be an even more challenging case if the hospital told you that you’re too impaired to be driving.
As you can see, there’s a lot of issues to investigate for a case where you have any kind of drugs in your system for a DUI. We’ll definitely need to get the actual blood results, we’ll need to see what the levels of the drugs were, and we’ll have to see what arguments we can make about the drugs not actually impairing you. Even in a case where you might have been hospitalized prior to the DUI incident, we can still see about possible arguments to make that you were not impaired enough to be guilty of DUI. Finally, there’s plenty of procedural issues we can attack for a DUI case, such as: did the officer have a good reason to pull you over, and did the officer have a good reason to arrest you for DUI to trigger the requirement for you to submit to a blood sample?
If you’re charged with a DUI or DUID in Virginia, you definitely need to request a copy of my free book How to Overcome Virginia DUI / DWI.
Photo by:Carly & Art