Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

DUI, OVI, whatever you wanna call it. We are taking a 360 degree approach, and we're talking about all things DUI in this series at Lawyer Talk. Check us out at Lawyer Talk podcast, by the way. Today, I'm gonna talk a little bit about field sobriety test. And we've already done some episodes on field sobriety, so I'm not gonna dig into the weeds of each individual test. I'll save that for a different episode. What I wanna talk about today is a question I get all the time, and and that is when can the police and why can the police just ask me as a driver of a car to do field sobriety tests? So let me give you a scenario. You're pulled over on the side of the road.

Steve Palmer [00:00:33]:

Maybe you were speeding, pulled over for going 75 in a 70 or whatever it would be. And so nothing, in other words, alcohol related in the sense that you weren't all over the road. You weren't driving erratically. There's no, tipster that phoned in a call that said, hey. Look. Jackass over there is driving like a maniac. You just got pulled over for a routine speeding case. And the police say, hey.

Steve Palmer [00:00:54]:

Look. I wanna order you out of the car, and I'd like you to do field sobriety test. And now you're thinking, oh, crap. But the question is why and when can the police do that? Here's how this works. First, ordering somebody out of a car, ordering a driver out of the car, that's called a MIMS order, Pennsylvania versus MIMS, I believe. And the police can do it for their own officer safety. Dig into the US Supreme Court case if you care to, but just accept that they can order you out of the car. So this notion that you can just sort of slide your driver's license through the window and and, and trick the cops into not checking you out.

Steve Palmer [00:01:25]:

That that's wrong. The police can order you out of the car if they want to, and you have to comply. But field sobriety test is a little bit different. In in law, we talk or in criminal procedure, we talk a lot about, the standards that the police have to employ to do certain things to you. So the first one in this scenario is gonna be what standard did the police have to follow to pull your car over. And there's a case called Delaware versus Prouse that says a police stop of motor vehicles is significant intrusion, which requires justification under the fourth amendment. That's fancy talk for saying they can't just pull you over willy nilly. They have to have a reason.

Steve Palmer [00:01:59]:

In our scenario, speeding was a reason, so they pulled you over. And the the standard generally is reasonable suspicion. So think the lowest standard is nothing. Right above that, you have something called a reasonable suspicion. And then above that, you have something called probable cause. Now the police have you on the side of the road, and they say, we would like to get you out of the car. Now we know you have to comply. And then they say, I'd like you to do field sobriety tests.

Steve Palmer [00:02:24]:

Now here's the crux of it. The police have to have some suspicion, some reasonable suspicion, at least here in Ohio, to ask you to do field sobriety tests. They can't just willy willy nilly do that. Usually, what happens is the police smell an odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from the person or the person's breath, which is fancy talk for the guy smells like booze, and the police say that's reasonable suspicion. And the case law agrees. That is reasonable suspicion. And now, they already had a car. You they say, we would like you to do field sobriety test.

Steve Palmer [00:02:57]:

Here's what they don't tell you. You can say no to that. You don't have to do field sobriety test. And I've covered this before. There may be, not a legal consequence, but a practical one. The police aren't gonna like it, and they're probably gonna cuff you. But when you go talk to somebody like me, I'm gonna say, good job. Now they have less evidence, to prosecute your case.

Steve Palmer [00:03:13]:

But, the answer to the question, the bigger question we're covering today is the police can ask you to do field sobriety tests if they have some reasonable suspicion to think that you are driving under the influence of alcohol, and it's probably enough that you just smelled like alcohol. It's probably enough if you stumbled or stuttered or had slurred speech or bloodshot eyes and smelled like alcohol. Doesn't take much. It's just a it's just a bottom of the ladder type of test. Doesn't mean you're getting convicted, but they can ask. Doesn't mean you have to take the test, but they can ask. Alright. DUI 360.

Steve Palmer [00:03:45]:

Check out the rest of the series. If you have more questions, shoot them to me at lawyer talk podcast dot com. Leave a comment or wherever you wanna do it, and, I'll try to cover the topic DUI or anything legal related. And as always, remember, this is not legal advice, folks. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not telling you what not to do. I'm just talking about topics here, so don't get crazy. Back next week with more DUI 360.