Fellow Texas DWI trial attorney Jamie Spencer recently wrote an excellent blog on     the overconfident police officer testifying at trial.  Jamie starts the post with a cite to a very interesting study done at Berkeley that ‘debunk[ed] conventional wisdom on trial witnesses’:

The researchers concluded that self-assured witnesses who make a mistake - even on issues of little importance - undermine their credibility by raising doubts about their competency, their ability to judge their own abilities and their motivations.

“People giving testimony, or advice, or opinions should therefore be careful to express appropriate degrees of confidence in their assertions,” the researchers write in a summary of their report in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science. “Otherwise, the 13th stroke of the clock will cast the other 12 in doubt.”

Jamie argues and I fully agree that often times an officer will try to testify that any person who is not intoxicated can do the field sobriety tests perfectly. As Jamie writes:

“When it comes to evaluating a defendant’s performance on the field sobriety tests, yes, NHTSA has their ‘standards’, but even the manual doesn’t attempt to suggest that everyone will do perfectly. Or even that all defendants who exhibit X number of clues on the [HGN, Walk and Turn, One Leg Stand, etc.] are intoxicated.

Consequently, when asked in cross examination whether my particular client could have exhibited the clues on videotape, but not be intoxicated, the officer has two choices:

(1) He can admit it’s possible that things other than intoxication could have caused my client’s ‘errors’ on the test.

(2) He can express with 100% confidence and certitude that the only reason for my client’s foot coming off the imaginary line is absolute proof of intoxication.”

Either answer will work for me, if the officer testifies there are other reasons that a person can make errors it shows that these “tests” are not 100% valid. If on the other hand he testifies that any mistake is because of intoxication you will be amazed at how many mistakes the officer’s report contains, not to mention his trial testimony. For those of you interested here is Jamie’s full blog.

Welcome to our west-texas/ Lubbock dwi blog. My name is Stephen Hamilton and my law partner is Nicky Boatwright. Nicky and I try many dwi/ duim cases in Lubbock and West-Texas. We decided to start this blog for several reasons. First, we often receive questions from clients and others about areas involving dwi. These questions often times raise interesting questions and so we have decided to use this blog to answer these questions and well as inform the public about dwi issues. We also decided to start the blog because we both enjoy the work we do as dwi defense attorneys. We strongly believe in the right of an adult to consume alcohol and operate a motor vehicle so long as the adult is not intoxicated. Our office including all of our staff is dedicated to the defense of those who drink and drive. We aggressively fight charges in Lubbock and west texas and are proud to say that we are DWI/ DUI trial attorneys. We hope you find this blog both educational and informative. We hope that if you or a loved one is ever chaged with a DUI, you will seek a skilled DUI/ DWI trial attorney and remember just being arrested does not mean that a person is automatically guilty.