Building a Defense For First Time DUI Charges Vienna

DUI attorneys in Vienna will examine point-by-point each of the different interactions between the police officer and the client in the case. The attorney will use all of the information gained in this process to challenge the claims of the prosecution and help prevent their client from being convicted of a first time DUI. Even if a person is facing a DUI charge for the first time, they will still be prosecuted severely in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Without the support of an experienced attorney, an individual accused of a DUI for the first time may end up with far more severe penalties than they had expected.

Creating a Defense

In order to begin building a defense, an experienced and vigorous DUI lawyer will discuss with their client is find out what the client remembers from the case. This involves going through everything that happened to a client that night, the client’s driving behavior, the client’s interaction with the police officer, whether or not there were field sobriety tests, how the client was stopped in the first place, and what the circumstances were surrounding the stop.   

Important Factors in a Defense

There are other various things that attorneys will know to ask about because the prosecution will need to use that evidence in proving the case against their client. From there, the attorney will reach out to the prosecutor in order to try to look at the DUI police dash-cam video, if one exists. The defense attorney will view this to determine how the client did on the field sobriety test, and whether or not the client’s performance indicated intoxication according to the national standard. Additionally the defense attorney will request any breath test or breathalyzer reports that were achieved during the course of the investigation. A DUI defense attorney will use this information to attempt to accurately find the key to your best defense.

How a Vienna Attorney Can Help

The factors that lawyers consider in DUI cases include situations like how the person’s driving behavior was before they were pulled over, what was the reason that somebody was pulled over to begin with, and will the officer be able to articulate that the person was committing some type of crime even before they were pulled over, which would point to what the client’s behavior was.

Attorneys pay very close attention to details like somebody’s speech, their interactions with the officer, what the officer said, if there were indicators that made them ask the person to step out of the vehicle, and whether or not the driver made any statements. From there, the attorney most likely look at the performance on the field sobriety tests, which tests were given, ensure the instructions were given appropriately, how did the client perform on these tests according to the police officer, how many indicators did the client show during the tests, and whether the officer correctly assumed that there was probable cause for the arrest.