Florida DUI Lawyer Blog

The South Florida Sun Sentinel has reported that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Miami-Dade County fired breathalyzer analyst Sandra Veiga last week. According to her dismissal notice, she improperly tested the Intoxilyzer 8000 machines, the only breath test analysis instruments approved for use in Florida. According to Florida criminal defense attorneys familiar with the case, the accuracy of as many as 10,000 breath tests used to test for DUI are in question in Miami-Dade County alone, with more in Broward and Monroe counties.

When Intoxilyzers appeared to be failing the required annual state accuracy test, Veiga violated the Miami-Dade department policy by turning off the machines. Her intervention in the machines’ processing prevented the Intoxilyzers from logging errors in a central database in Tallahassee. In addition, Veiga advised other police inspectors on her method of avoiding any record of a failing test. Such conduct calls into question the integrity of the Florida DUI Breath testing program and qualified DUI attorneys have already begun filing motions in Broward, Miami Dade and Palm Beach Counties. Judges in Fort Lauderdale have been agreeable to continuing cases while further investigation continues while the court has been less liberal further south in Miami Dade.

DUI attorney William Moore, immediately filed motions to continue all of his DUI trials involving a breatholyzer upon first learning of Viega's manipulating the machines in October. He has since been working closely with DUI Intoxilyzer experts in order to best defend against the State charges pending against his clients.

"DUI convictions have serious consequences on ones career goals, in addition to social stigma and DMV complications. When an technician actively takes steps to hide the fact that these machines are failing, we have to put each and every intoxylizer test into question.”

Despite the problem with the FDLE inspector, the Intoxilyzers were still separately inspected monthly by the police departments using them. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office has already indicated that it believes the devices were operating accurately and prosecutors do not anticipate any problems with their DUI cases.

These recent Miami-Dade developments might make you wonder how accurate breath tests are typically. Well, the answer to that depends. The Intoxilyzer 8000 can produce inaccurately high results for numerous reasons.

The first is mouth alcohol, which can include alcohol trapped in the mouth due to extensive dental work, from vomiting, or recently consumed cough syrup. Additionally, if you have blood present in your mouth (perhaps from a recently acquired injury or severe gum disease), the alcohol in the blood will be factored into the reading.

Continue reading " Broward County DUI Attorney: Breath Tests in Broward County Called Into Question After Operator Fired - Broward DUI Attorneys Challenge Open Cases " »

For more information on this article, contact Broward DUI Attorney, William Moore.

The Miami Herald reported yesterday that a Marion County woman is facing DUI charges after police found her passed out in her vehicle.

On Monday, October 20, police in Ocala, Florida responded to a report that a woman was sleeping in her parked Isuzu truck with a child in the front seat. The truck was parked on the shoulder of the road.

Police found Kimberly Gae Equatore, 42, passed out in driver’s seat of the truck with her 4-year-old son in the front seat. Equatore informed an official from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office that she had consumed several beers, but later denied consuming any alcohol. Several small, partially empty bottles of vodka were found in the backseat and in Equatore’s purse.

Equatore was uncooperative while taking a field sobriety test and refused to submit to an Intoxilyzer breath test. She was arrested for DUI and subsequently jailed. The Florida Department of Children and Families, as well as Equatore’s husband, were contacted regarding the child’s safety.

Under Florida law, driving under the influence can occur even if the car is parked. This is known as a non-driving DUI. The driver needs to be in actual physical control of the vehicle while intoxicated. The person behind the wheel is often found to be in actual physical control of a vehicle when the keys are in the ignition, even if the engine is turned off. The prosecutor does not even need to prove that the person behind the wheel of the car drove at all. In some cases, the people found sleeping it off in a car have been charged with DUI even when the keys were not in the ignition or the car was inoperable. Perhaps even more surprisingly, you can be charged with a DUI under these circumstances even if you were asleep in your car on private property instead of a public street. Last year, Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver David Boston was charged with DUI in a high profile case after he was found asleep in his vehicle with the depressant GHB in his system. A breath test found no alcohol in his system.

Continue reading " Passed Out Marion County Woman Charged with Non-Driving DUI in Parked Car " »

In two separate recent DUI cases, Collier County Judges dropped the gavel on drunken drivers. In one case, Shayne Marie Capo, who used to live in Naples Park, but now lives in Orlando, killed her friend in a drunk driving crash on November 28, 2001. She accepted a plea deal of two years of house arrest and eight years of probation. The alternative was a 10-year prison term. She was charged with DUI manslaughter (and pleaded to this), which is a second-degree felony.

In addition to the house arrest and probation, Judge Jack Schoonover, the original judge on her case, fined her $1,000 at sentencing and ordered her to spend every November 28 in jail until 2013, when her probation ends. She must also do 15 hours of community service every year, and cannot drink any alcohol. Her license was also suspended, and she can only drive to and from work.

Recently, she filed a motion requesting early termination of her house arrest. Judge Fred Hardt denied her motion after Assistant State Attorney Mike Provost objected. Provost pointed out she made a plea deal to avoid the prison time, which, by law, could have been up to 15 years.

In another case, Robert James Bacon killed a mother of one – she was riding her bicycle in a bike lane in February, 2008. Collier County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Krier refused a bond reduction for him, even though he completed the county jail’s Project Recovery Program.

At the time of the accident, Maria Alba Alvarez Hernandez was riding her bike in the bike lane going southbound on U.S. 41 near the Imperial Golf Course when Bacon swerved into the bike lane and hit her. He then fled the scene. His blood-alcohol content was 0.259 and 0.258 once he was found and tested. He was charged with DUI manslaughter, leaving the scene of a crash with a death, DUI, DUI with personal damage and DUI with property damage. He is being held on a $570,000 bond – reduced from $600,000. Bacon also faces up to 15 years for each felony and a year for each misdemeanor.

Assistant State Attorney Mara Marzano has refused to negotiate a lenient sentence and cites Bacon’s history of alcoholism and his nine 2005 convictions for leaving the scene with property damage and DUI property damage. Bacon was sentenced to a year of probation (in a separate case), but he violated it a year later. He had just finished that term a short time before this recent crash. Bacon has admitted to Marzano that he has been heavily drinking since he was 17.

Judges are less willing to reduce bonds and prosecutors are less likely to settle in DUI manslaughter cases, citing the safety of the general public.

If you are charged with a DUI crime please contact the offices of William Moore. Offices are conveniently locate in Broward, Miami Dade and Palm Beach Counties.