Orlando DUI Defense Lawyer Blog

Following the guilty plea of a former Marine to DUI manslaughter in connection with a 2010 fatal car accident in Tampa, the man's attorney said it was "probably as difficult of a case as I have seen." The defendant, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, was not given treatment by the Marine Corps despite having serious cognitive and emotional problems due to injuries and trauma suffered in combat.

We previously discussed this DUI manslaughter case in our Sept. 28, 2011 post. According to his attorney, the defendant, 38, volunteered for the Marines shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He has since been discharged from the Corps, but not before earning three Purple Hearts and a Bronze star. After he witnessed a bloody attack of a bus and sustained serious injuries in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, the defendant's superiors suspected that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Testing also indicated problems with verbal learning and focus.

An Orlando-area woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison late last week in connection with a drunk-driving accident that left two men dead. She will serve five years' probation once she is released and may have to pay the families of the deceased up to $20,000 to reimburse them for funeral expenses. In addition, she will never be able to drive again because her driving privileges have been permanently revoked. Her story is a good example of how seriously authorities take DUIs and other alcohol-related driving offenses.

The 20-year-old woman was intoxicated on New Year's Eve 2010 when she struck a car just after midnight. An 18-year-old man and a 22-year-old man, both of Orlando, were in the other vehicle died in the collision.

A Sarasota County couple was arrested on April 29 for DUI after a sheriff's deputy said he saw their SUV towing a girl in a toy car. The deputy claimed that the man driving the SUV, the girl's grandfather, was intoxicated, as was his wife, who as allegedly riding in the rear of the vehicle.

According to police, a toy sports car was attached to the trailer hitch by a pair of dog leashes. The deputy said he saw the SUV slowly towing the toy car with the 7-year-old granddaughter riding it on an access road.

Prosecutors in Florida love blood alcohol tests. They claim that blood tests for alcohol content provide some of the clearest evidence that a person accused of DUI was legally intoxicated when he or she was pulled over. But like any other lab work performed by humans, blood tests are subject to error. What happens when the court cannot trust the results of a blood test?

In one state at least, authorities pay to have the suspect samples retested to avoid having all their results thrown out of court. Officials in Colorado recently admitted that a former lab technician from that state's Department of Health incorrectly tested several defendants' blood samples and reported inflated blood-alcohol levels as a result. This means that some of the accused may not have been legally intoxicated as claimed.