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Authorities in Halifax County, North Carolina accuse a man found the scene of an accident with driving while impaired and theft. Deputies fielded a report of a stolen vehicle around 3:00 in the morning earlier this month. A van owned by a pharmacy was reportedly stolen from the Littleton, North Carolina home of an employee. A Halifax County deputy looked into that allegation during the early morning of October 3.

Meanwhile, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol opened up an investigation into a single vehicle car accident in Nash County. The wreck reportedly involved a van from the Halifax County pharmacy. No driver was found at the scene of the accident. However, a trooper claims that a 20-year-old man was somewhere near the scene of the single vehicle accident. The trooper claims that not only did the young man appear to be intoxicated, but that he had injuries consistent with being in a crash.

News reports do not indicate what type of injury the Gumberry, North Carolina man had displayed, or what led the trooper to conclude that the young man was under the influence. Nonetheless, the man found near the crash site was taken into custody.

Authorities in nearby Halifax County reportedly have charged the young man with larceny. The theft of a motor vehicle charge apparently relates to the wrecked pharmacy van found unoccupied in Nash County.

Meanwhile, the North Carolina State Patrol accuses the 20-year-old driver with DWI and leaving the scene of an accident. Underage drivers can be charged with an underage drinking and driving offense based upon any evidence of alcohol impairment. It is not clear in the media whether law enforcement obtained any alcohol test from the suspect.

Authorities booked the Gumberry man into the Halifax County Jail, with bond set at ,500. A court date is scheduled for November 7.

Source: The Daily Herald, “Gumberry man arrested after Drugco van theft,” Oct. 5, 2012

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North Carolina native Randy Travis has had his second brush with the law of the year on alcohol related allegations. The singer was accused of an alcohol offense in February, after law enforcement found the musician sitting in his car with an open bottle of wine outside a church. Late Tuesday evening, law enforcement in Texas claims that a convenience store clerk called to report a naked man who tried to buy cigarettes at the store. The clerk says that the regular customer left in frustration because he did not have any pockets for cash or a wallet to pay for the smokes.

A short time later, police say a second caller reported a man lying in the street. Law enforcement reportedly arrived to find Travis, naked and bruised, near his crashed Trans Am in a construction zone. Police arrested Travis on suspicion of DWI. But the musician’s legal troubles deepened while troopers transported Travis after the DWI arrest.

Generally, law enforcement occasionally tacks on charges after a DWI investigation related to allegations of resisting arrest and similar claims. In the recent Randy Travis incident in Texas, law enforcement accuses the North Carolina native of threatening police officers. Authorities allege Travis threatened to shoot and kill the officers.

Law enforcement claims Travis refused to submit to an alcohol test after the DWI arrest. Authorities reportedly obtained a blood sample at an area hospital, purportedly under that state’s DWI and implied consent laws. The musician reportedly was released from jail on ,000 bond Wednesday morning.

Source: Los Angeles Times, “Randy Travis: Naked DWI arrest allegedly escalated with threats,” Christie D’Zurilla, Aug. 8, 2012

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Law enforcement says that a man who had been thrown in jail on suspicion of driving while impaired hanged himself while in detention. The 55-year-old Pinehurst, North Carolina, man been booked into the McDowell County Jail around 6:00 Saturday evening and was being held on 0 bond. The man was in an isolated cell, and jail staff says that he was found hanging from a bed sheet at 8:36 p.m.

Jail staff reportedly called in a medical team and attempted CPR, but the staff was not able to resuscitate the man in jail. The County Sheriff says that the jail staff is required to check on inmates twice each hour. If a detainee is on “suicide watch,” staff is required to observe the inmate every 15 minutes. The staff says that the inmate was not on suicide watch.

The man was being held after a Marion Police officer was dispatched to an off ramp along Interstate 40. Law enforcement says that a caller reported a man slumped over the steering wheel of a pickup truck on the shoulder of the road.

The police officer took the Pinehurst man into custody around 4:30 Saturday afternoon on suspicion of DWI. Police also claim that the man had an open container of alcohol in the pickup truck.

The Marion Police say that an alcohol test showed that the man’s blood alcohol level measured at least 0.30 percent.

The County Sheriff says that the man’s death was self-inflicted. A medical examiner was called to the jail. Agents from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation are reportedly looking into the matter.

Source: Greensboro News and Record, “Inmate hangs himself in McDowell County jail cell,” The McDowell News, June 26, 2012

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Proponents of the so-called “standardized” field sobriety tests (SFSTs) have long pointed to federally-funded field studies which indicate a high correlation between performance on the tests and actual blood alcohol concentrations (BAC). 

Subsequent studies, however, have called those conclusions into question.

Originally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) paid a private group, the Southern California Research Institute, to conduct studies to find which among the various field sobriety tests used by police were most effective and to develop a standardized 3-test battery.  SCRI subsequently reported to NHTSA that a battery of walk-and-turn, one-leg-stand and nystagmus provided a strong correlation with breath test results.

Confronted with questions about those conclusions, NHTSA later commissioned the same researcher who had conducted the original studies, Marcelline Burns, to  corroborate the accuracy of her own tests of the SFSTs – rather than commission an independent source. 

Burns accompanied a small number of San Diego officers conducting actual DUI investigations in the field.  After administering the SFSTs, the officers were asked to guess whether suspects had blood alcohol  concentrations (BAC) over or under .08%.   Burns reported a 91% correlation between SFSTs and BAC over-under estimates, thereby validating the battery of tests she had helped create.

A subsequent scientific article challenged Burns’ corroboration of her own research.  In Hlastala, Polissar and Oberman, “Statistical Evaluation of Standardized Field Sobriety Tests”, 50(3) Journal of Forensic Sciences 1 (May 2005), the raw data used in the validation study were obtained from NHTSA through the Freedom of Information Act.  The methodology used was then reviewed and the data subjected to statistical analysis.

The methodology was found to be seriously flawed in a number of respects.  For one thing, many of the suspects had very high BACs, making estimates of whether a suspect was over .08% obvious regardless of SFST performance.  For another, there was no attempt to isolate the influence of SFST performance from other factors:  officers estimated BACs after the field sobriety tests, but they also took into account earlier observations, such as erratic driving, slurred speech, odor of alcohol, flushed face, admissions as to amount of alcohol consumed, etc.

The most glaring defect in Burns’ corroborative study was that “all police officers  participating in the study were equipped with NHTSA-approved portable breath testing devices”.  In other words, the San Diego officers already had the results of portable breath tests before they were asked to estimate the BACs later obtained at the station!

After reviewing the flawed methodology, the raw data was then statistically analyzed.  The conclusions:

If we consider three ranges of MBAC [measured blood alcohol content], 0.00% to 0.04%, 0.04% to 0.08%, and 0.08% to 0.12%, the officers’ EBAC [estimated blood alcohol content] overestimated the MBAC 76%, 67% and 48% of the time, and underestimated it 14%, 26% and 28% of the time. 

In other words, officers relying upon field sobriety tests were far more likely to overestimate  BACs than underestimate — particularly with those suspects having very low BACs. 

(T)he utility of the SFST depends very much on how intoxicated an individual is.  Accuracy (and specificity) are low when individuals are close to 0.08% MBAC, but if the individuals are quite intoxicated, such as above 0.12%, then accuracy is high.

In borderline cases involving persons at or under the legal limit, then, officers were very poor at estimating blood-alcohol levels based upon SFSTs.  And it is these cases, of course, that are critical.  Suspects with high BACs are relatively easy to single out without the help of field tests; it is for the closer cases, particularly those who are innocent (below .08%), that the SFSTs are designed.  And it is with these very cases that the tests apparently fail. 

Put another way, accuracy in using field sobriety tests is high when they are not needed — and low when they are.

For another independent study conducted by Professor Spurgeon Cole of Clemson University, in which he found field sobriety tests to be worthless, see Are Field Sobriety Tests Designed for Failure?.
 

DUI BLOG

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A former North Carolina state trooper recently took his drunk driving charges to trial. The man was forced to retire after suffering an off-duty back injury. The 37-year-old reportedly says that he felt sick and was experiencing back pain Jan. 24, 2011.

He reportedly says that he took two prescribed medications to help him sleep and to control the pain. It appears that those two medications later became the basis for North Carolina DWI charges against the former trooper.

The man says that he remembers taking the prescribed codeine around 3:30 in the afternoon and an Ambien pill around 7:30 in the evening before going to bed that January night. The next thing that he remembers, according to the evidence at his DWI trial, is waking up in a magistrate’s office wearing his pajamas and pink slippers.

Prosecutors alleged that the man was driving a couple hours after he took the prescribed Ambien tablet and was in a car accident. The woman who was also in the crash says that the retired trooper told her a dreamlike tale about a strange investigation involving disguised cars, alcohol lights, helicopters and officers crashing into erratic drivers in some sort of crack down. The woman claims that the retired trooper showed his badge, but later said that he was retired.

The trooper was charged with impersonating an officer and DWI related to the alleged incident. Evidence was presented at trial Monday in Orange County District Court. The judge found the former trooper not guilty of impersonating an officer.

The judge found that the accused had duly admitted that he was retired and did not try to take advantage of his claim that he was an officer when he had displayed the badge. In acquitting the accused of the impersonation charge, the judge also said, “I believe the defendant was not in the state of mind to form criminal intent,” according to the Burlington Herald-Sun.

However, the judge did not acquit the defendant of the DWI charge. The judge reportedly reasoned that the defendant had not communicated with medical professionals about his codeine prescription when he obtained a later prescription for Ambien. The judge found the former trooper guilty of DWI related to the prescription medications.

The man was sentenced to a suspended 30 day jail term, with a fine, fees, court costs and community service. The man’s driver’s license was also taken, but he may be able to obtain limited driving privileges, according to the Herald-Sun.

Source: Burlington Herald-Sun, “Ex-trooper guilty of DWI,” Beth Velliquette, April 24, 2012

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A campus police officer says he found a woman asleep in her car near a utility building on the University of North Carolina Campus. At the time she was found, authorities say she was wearing only a black bra. After finding her in the car, the police officer arrested her on suspicion of driving while impaired.

Apparently at some point during the encounter with law enforcement, the woman submitted to an alcohol test. Authorities claim the alcohol test returned results showing the woman’s blood alcohol level was 0.24 and 0.23 percent. North Carolina law presumes impairment for the purposes of DWI charges at a blood alcohol level of 0.08 percent for people age 21 and older. However, the minimum legal limit is only part of the complex DWI laws in the state.

The potential penalties for a DWI conviction can vary depending upon a variety of aggravating and mitigating factors listed in section 20 of the Motor Vehicle Code. Included as an aggravating factor to be weighed in sentencing is gross impairment while driving, which is defined in the statute as an alcohol level of 0.15 percent or more.

North Carolina DWI laws, which as this blog has reported will provide stiffer penalties for certain grossly aggravating factors under “Laura’s Law” that becomes effective on December 1, provide a complex array of aggravating factors and mitigating factors that can be involved in sentencing. An experienced Greenville DWI defense attorney can help explain the complexity of the strict North Carolina DWI statutes to allow a person facing charges to better understand what they are actually facing.

The UNC student who was recently arrested on suspicion of DWI charges after being found asleep in her car argues in her DWI defense that she may have been a victim as someone may have drugged her without her knowledge.

Source: Gaston Gazette, “Woman found drunk and naked may have been drugged, attorney says,” Nov. 13, 2011

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A person reportedly called Gastonia Police last week to report a car allegedly driving in a reckless manner. The caller reportedly said the car was crossing the center line as it traveled in Gaston County. Later that evening, a Gastonia police officer says he spotted a 2008 Chevrolet sedan pulled over near an intersection in Gastonia. The officer thought the car looked suspicious and decided to check it out.

The officer says he found a 27-year-old man asleep in the vehicle and ultimately, the man was arrested on suspicion of driving while impaired. The officer claims the driver smelled of alcohol and exhibited other characteristics allegedly indicating the man may have been under the influence. Bloodshot eyes, slurred speech during the encounter and the inability of the driver to maintain balance are included in the allegations.

The officer says he found an open container of alcohol in the passenger side of the vehicle during the encounter. The man, who had allegedly been sleeping in the Chevrolet along the side of the road, was arrested on suspicion of DWI. Law enforcement claims the man submitted to an Intoxilyzer breath test, which reportedly showed a result of 0.30 percent alcohol content. North Carolina law presumes impairment at 0.08 percent BAC.

The accused was booked into the Gaston County Jail with bail set at ,000. Police claim the man previously faced DWI and reckless driving charges on year ago, in August, 2010.

The law allows prosecutors in North Carolina to bring DWI charges on two separate theories; presumed impairment based upon an alcohol test showing a result of .08 or more; and, based upon their observations of driving conduct and observations of the accused during a traffic stop. But in some cases, law enforcement does not actually see any driving conduct.

Individuals in Greenville and Pitt County who are accused of DWI can speak with an experienced DWI defense attorney to protect their rights.

Source: Gaston Gazette, “Gaston man accused of DWI,” Kevin Ellis, Aug. 11, 2011

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