Speaker 1: Have you been arrested or charged with a DUI that is unbeatable? My name is attorney Manny Serra of the Rawson Law Firm and I'm here to provide you with some information that lets you know that your case may not be unbeatable. So these cases that come across my desk that are unbeatable cases, right? A lot of times I speak with clients and speak at schools with DUI schools or anything of that nature and I'm reviewing the probable cause affidavit. So that's the police report. And so the police report is a report that the officer authors under oath establishing probable cause to validate their arrest for a DUI. So of course everything in that report is going to be one-sided. 99% of the time you read that report and you go, wow officer had a lot of evidence against my client. But that's their job is to formulate the evidence against them. Our job is to then tear apart that evidence. And how do we do that? We look for legal loopholes, right? And like people like to call them legal loopholes, it sounds like a dirty word. What they really are, we're protecting your rights. You have a fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. A fourth amendment right against illegal searches and seizures at the hands of government. You have due process rights. A lot of things that the constitution allows for you to be protected throughout the case of being charged with a crime. If you're charged with a crime, you're innocent until proven guilty. So one of the big big invasions of privacy legal loopholes that we use is did an officer have reasonable suspicion or probable cause to pull your vehicle over? In layman's terms, did they have a reason to stop your car? A legitimate reason to stop your car? And so in order to do that a difference in the case has to do with things that are factual and things that are legal. So some things that are factually bad are actually legally incredible. And the legally incredible part is where you find those legal loopholes that can dismiss your entire case through what's called a motion to suppress. Think of suppression as cutting something out. We file motions to suppress. And if you cut out the main parts of the state attorney's case, they have no case against you any further. And that motion to suppress, why is it filed? When an officer invades your rights. In this particular case of unlawfully stopping a car, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy to be traveling in your car. Meaning that an officer can't pull you over for no reason. If you're at home, you have a really big strong right to privacy. But in your car, it's a little lessened. But it's more than just walking on the street. So what does an officer have to have to pull you over? They need to believe that you committed a traffic infraction. And they need to have either regional suspicion or probable cause that that happened. And back to the factually and legal issue. Legally, I love when I read on a police report that the car failed to maintain a single lane. Because let's think, ladies and gentlemen. Factually, the back of a car going boom, boom, boom, in and out of its lane, right? In the middle of the night on a highway, 3am. What's the first thing that goes through your head? This guy must be drunk, right? Oh my god. Let's slow our car down. Let's not get close to this guy. Could they be texting? Could they be on MapQuest? For those of you who use MapQuest back in the day, could they be on their phone? You know, could they be yelling at the kids in the back? Sure. But the first thing that comes to your mind, factually, late at night, this person must be drinking. However, legally, in the state of Florida, you are allowed from travel from lane to lane. You can go over a lane, little those dotted lines and come back into your lane. So long as other traffic is not affected. That's the big magic part of this case. So if an officer says that the vehicle failed to maintain its single lane but no other traffic was affected, boom, big red flag for me. That's one of the big legal loopholes that you can find on a case to chop the head off of the state's case, suppress the rest of the findings of the officer. So what happens, right, when an officer pulls you over for failing to maintain a single lane if no other traffic was affected? That officer may observe you to have signs of impairment. You may observe you to have slow and lethargic movement, odor of an alcoholic beverage, slurring your speech that you fail to stay within a lane a few times and then put you through a DUI investigation and then arrest you. We go into court, we take the officer's deposition, we have a transcript of it. Hopefully, we have a dash camera, a body camera, and it shows that no other traffic was affected by you going in and out of your lane. At that particular time, we would ask the judge to suppress all the evidence after the stop, meaning that it's fruit of the poisonous tree. You hear that a lot. That means that once you've been pulled over for an illegal stop, remember, we're talking about that stop, if the officer didn't have probable cause or reasonable suspicion to pull your vehicle over, anything he or she finds after, even if you had a brick of cocaine in the back of your car, can't be used against you in court. It gets thrown out. It is fruit of the poisonous tree, the stop being the poison, the stop of your car being wrong. And so your rights, your constitutional rights, protect you from an officer illegally stopping your vehicle. And so on a DUI, you can hear, I admitted to having 50 tequila shots, right? Falling over out of the car, telling the officer that they are, you know, Jesus reincarnated. Whatever it may be, it doesn't matter if the officer could not legally formulate a basis to stop that vehicle. It all goes away. So if the motion to suppress is filed, and it's a strong motion, you start negotiating with the state attorney. And the state attorney knows that they have a chance to win it, and they have a chance to lose it. But instead of risking losing a case entirely, that's when negotiations begin, where you can start to talk with the defense attorney, if they're the state attorney, if you're the defense attorney, talk with the state attorney and say, hey, look, instead of going forward on the motion that's set for hearing, let's put together a package that's acceptable to my client. And that's when we talk about a breakdown of a DUI, where you beat the DUI down to a careless or reckless driving. And careless or reckless drivings are fantastic results, given each client's set of circumstances. Because of this, you can seal a reckless or careless driving off your record, and your insurance does not go up nearly as much as it does with a DUI. And then finally, the DUI stigma in society is just really bad. If you see that on someone's record, you think, oh, it's like that big red flag, a big stain on the record. Careless or reckless driving looks so much better. So a lot of the reasons to file a motion to suppress are to beat the case and to make your case stronger against the state attorney, but it also opens up negotiations. And so when you're sitting here thinking about my case is unbeatable, I was blacked out drunk, I crashed into a barrier, there was an open container in my vehicle, all of these things that you read and see on your probable cause affidavit, a savvy attorney knows that ain't the end of the world. That hadn't even started. It starts with, did they have an ability to pull your vehicle over? And if they didn't, guess what? We win. And so that's really what this is all about. And so I hope I was able to provide you with some information regarding a legal loophole regarding an officer's ability to pull your vehicle over, whether they had a reasonable suspicion or probable cause to invade your privacy, meaning pull you over in your car and speak with you. Again, my name is attorney Manny Cera, and we're here for you when bad things happen to good people.