Attorney David Black discusses a person's rights on the road while in Arizona

Описание: Hi. This is David Black, Law Offices of David A. Black.

Today is Friday, June 8, 2012. The discussion of the day, a question that friends of mine and people unfamiliar with the criminal law often ask me is what can and can't I be pulled over for, driving on the road and what are my rights?

The first thing I like to tell people is, they should understand that there are limited rights on the roadway because the roadway is a public place, courts have held that police have an extra duty of community protection and likewise, I guess conversely, drivers have limited right to be free from searches and seizures.

Now, that doesnot mean that you can be pulled over for no reason. It doesn't mean that you can be pulled over for what's calledjust a hunch in the case law.

What it means is that, a case that made legal the Terry Frisk, which is Terry V. Ohio and involved officers suspecting a robbery was taking place, simply asking for information, stopping somebody temporarily and frisking them, patting them down has been applied to drivers on the road way.

The specific terminology is, if the officer has specific and reasonable suspicion, based upon facts which rise to the level of reasonable suspicion then an officer can temporarily detain that individual.

Now, reasonable suspicion is lower than probable cause but nevertheless it requires some findings. There is something that is not normal, something that not every driver's doing and something that causes this officer to reasonably believe that this person is committing a crime or traffic infraction.

That means that if you're weaving within your lanebadly, potentially the officer has suspicion of DUI. Now, there's no other traffic violation that's weaving within your lane so he couldn't suspect that. In effect, that's an issue that we're litigating presently and we do litigate a lot.

If you fail to maintain a single lane, the officer has a reasonable suspicion, at least one specific fact, to think that you violated the unsafe lane change or failure to maintain a single lane statute.

People often say that we commit a million traffic violations every time we're on the road and an officer's simply asked to pick one of them. That's true and it's not true.

One of the things that we look for are the time of day and the officer's detail to see if he's actually using these reasons, these minor traffic infractions as a pretext.

A case named rent says that it's okay to have a pretext. You're allowed to pull over a drug smuggler because he's a drug smuggler as long as he also commits some other traffic violation.

But, the pretext can call to question the accuracy of his observations.Did he really commit a traffic violation or was the officer making that up? That's what we're trying to doin these cases where somebody is on a DUI task force and our client is pulled over for something minor.

Now if the real suspicion is DUI, that's fine. Just like in rent it's fine but it does call the question whether or not that infraction actually occurred or was he just leaving the parking lot of a bar like in another case we're handling right now.

Anyway, it's a complex series of law, something we like to look into in every single case and certainly something that a good criminal lawyer, whether it's me or somebody else, can flush out for you and see if your case can be won that way and certainly we have won quite a number of cases arguing a lack of reasonable suspicion.

If you have any questions, as always, feel free to call us and I appreciate you watching our video blog today.


For more information on this topic, please feel free to visit our website or give us a call.

Law Offices of David A. Black
40 N Central Ave #1850
Phoenix, AZ 85004
(480) 280-8028
http://www.dbphoenixcriminallawyer.com


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