Effectiveness of Breath-Alcohol Odor
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 10:32 am
In every DUI case, the officer is always prepared to testify against the arrested suspect, especially for breath-alcohol. If the arrest report doesn’t include such odor, then the suspect would probably be booked for driving under drugs’ influence. In other words, alcohol on a suspect’s breath would always be the observation encountered in every DUI case.
It’s also the most damaging because the jury would inevitably conclude that “when there’s smoke, there’s fire.” This means that alcohol present on the breath would lead to alcohol present in the body.
Fortunately, your DUI lawyer can raise two effective defense attacks:
- -Question the source of smell
- -Question the intoxication conclusion
One important point to take note: basic alcohol does not have any odor (or only a little). The fact is: the officer only smells the “flavoring odor” of the drink (wine, gin, beer, and scotch). And this odor can be deceptive as to the drink’s strength and amount consumed. For example, beer and wine will leave the strongest alcohol odor yet they’re the least intoxicating ones. In fact, a single beer can smell stronger on the breath than several martinis.
Furthermore, the smell of alcohol can be detected from a person who consumed a “near beer” beverage. These are non-alcoholic beverages made from yeast, hops, malt, and grain. It tastes, smells, and looks like regular beer but it does not contain any alcohol at all.
Tags: alcohol, breath-alcohol, dui, DUI lawyer, lawyer, officer