Police Must Comply With The Implied Consent Law

Defenses related to the failure of the police to comply with the requirements of the Florida implied consent statute.

Once you have been arrested for DUI-DWI, the police officer making the arrest must inform you of specific rights under state law relating to your obligation to take a state-administered test of your blood, breath or urine, as well as other rights to refuse this testing.

The officer is also obligated to advise you of any independent test rights that you may have under state law. Of course, if you do refuse to submit to the chemical test requested by the officer, the fact that refused may be presented as evidence against you by the prosecution at trial.

In addition, you will have your license immediately taken from you, suspended or revoked for a period of time as a result of having refused. As discussed elsewhere in this book, you do have the right to make a prompt challenge to that suspension, and you may be able to regain your license despite not submitting to the testing requested.

If the requesting officer did not read the correct implied consent warning to you at all, your attorney is likely to argue that you were denied reasonable explanation of your options. If you did not understand your legal rights, any action you took with regard to submitting to or declining the state’s chemical tests was not made with a full understanding.

Your attorney may be able to get any unfavorable test results excluded from being introduced at trial. Without these tests results showing a scientific measurement of either drugs and/or alcohol in your system at the time of the testing, the prosecution’s case against you may be crippled, and the DUI-DWI charges against you may be dismissed or reduced to a lesser offense.