If you are arrested on suspicion of impaired driving in North Carolina, you have a number of rights that must be honored in order for the State to convict you of a DWI. One important right is your right to have a witness present at various stages of the investigation, including during administration of the breathalyzer test at the...
Continue ReadingIn Raleigh or elsewhere in North Carolina, if you are arrested on suspicion of a DWI, you have rights that must be honored at specific stages of the process. In State v. Knoll, 322 N.C. 535 (1988), the North Carolina Court of Appeals addressed the issue of a DWI defendant’s right to collect evidence in his or her own defense....
Continue ReadingIf you are charged with a DWI in Raleigh or elsewhere in North Carolina and you refuse to submit to a chemical analysis of your breath (in other words, the large breathalyzer machine at the police station — but not the portable unit that some officers carry in their squad cars), you will face revocation of your license for...
Continue ReadingSeveral sections of the North Carolina code address the issue of impaired driving. The statute itself, describing the elements of the DWI offense, reads as follows: § 20‑138.1. Impaired driving. (a) Offense. – A person commits the offense of impaired driving if he drives any vehicle upon any highway, any street, or any public vehicular area within this State:...
Continue ReadingWe’ve talked previously about the Interlock Ignition System (IIS) that North Carolina law requires certain individuals to install in order to drive, following a DWI conviction. But what if you fall into a category in which you are only permitted to get your standard license back after having driven with an IIS installed in your vehicle for a year?...
Continue ReadingUnder certain circumstances when your license is revoked following a DWI conviction in North Carolina, you may be required to install an Ignition Interlock System (IIS) into your vehicle before you’re able to drive again. The IIS is a device that is hard-wired into your vehicle’s ignition, which requires you to blow into a breathalyzer prior to operating your...
Continue ReadingIf you’ve been charged with a DWI in North Carolina, you likely had your driver’s license suspended for 30 days. If you did not have your driver’s license in your possession when you were stopped, however, you may not realize that the 30-day clock of your temporary revocation doesn’t start to run until you take an additional step: you...
Continue ReadingWake County police officers routinely use three Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFSTs) to measure impairment in individuals suspected of driving while impaired. The three tests are: Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus Test (HGN), which purportedly measures impairment by revealing “jerkiness” in eye movement while the eyes track an object Walk-and-Turn test (WAT) One-Leg-Stand (OLS) The results of these tests, as reported...
Continue ReadingIn Raleigh and elsewhere in North Carolina, if you are stopped while driving your vehicle and asked to perform any field sobriety tests to test for impairment, you are fully within your rights to simply decline. If you are suspected of a DWI, you are not required to recite the alphabet from the middle, or count backwards, or follow...
Continue ReadingIn North Carolina, against all good sense, you can be charged and convicted of DWI — driving while impaired — while riding your bike. Your common sense might lead you to think that criminalizing the far safer option of riding a bike after consuming alcohol would be encouraged, when the alternative is operating an automobile, but in North Carolina,...
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