Question: What is probable cause in a Georgia DUI case?
Answer: From the time they pull you over, what they’re doing is trying to build a case against you. As soon as they find out that you have any alcohol in your system at all, if you admit to having had anything to drink, then that’s what they’re going to try to do. And the best thing to try to do from the get-go, if we can do it early enough to prevent it from getting out of hand, is to beat it for lack of probable cause. And basically what we do is we just look at all their supposed evidence and just show that: one, the evidence is not enough period by itself to show anything, much less a DUI; but two, even if they have evidence, the evidence they have wasn’t obtained properly. They got a breathalyzer without totally informing our client how to go about doing that, whether or not he was required to do it, the proper way or if it could be used against him. Most of the probable cause issues happen from wrecks. Anytime there is an automobile accident late at night, early in the morning, the first thing the officers are going to do is try to find that one of the drivers was DUI. That’s immediately what they try to do and it’s not, nothing fair about that. A lot of times they will rush to that judgment without even tending to injuries or any part of the accident. And DUI can be a cause of accidents, but certainly not the only cause.