Virginia Lawyer Has DUI Reduced to Reckless Driving
One of the Virginia DUI lawyers at The Weiland Firm, PLC recently had a DUI charge reduced to reckless driving. The reduced charge resulted from the police officer’s reason for the stop.
Police stopped our client for failure to dim his headlights. Upon being stopped, the police officer smelled the odor of alcohol and noticed that our client had red, glassy eyes. The officer asked our client if he had been drinking. Our client responded that he had been earlier in the day. The officer asked our client to step out of the vehicle and proceeded to conduct field sobriety tests, to which our client performed poorly.
After refusing to take a breathalyzer test in the field, our client was arrested and taken to the police station. There, police conducted a breathalyzer test. Results show that our client’s blood alcohol content was at .14, well above the legal limit.
After hiring the Law Firm of The Weiland Firm, PLC, our Virginia DUI attorney went to work pulling apart the case and was able to challenge the charge based in the reason for the stop. Section 46.2-1034 of the Code of Virginia states that “[w]henever a vehicle approaches an oncoming vehicle…the driver of such vehicle shall use the low beam of his vehicle’s headlights so aimed that glaring rays are not projected into the eyes of the oncoming driver.”
The police stopped our client for high beams, but our client was not operating the vehicle’s high beams at the time of the stop. Police mistook the fog lights for high beams and therefore stopped our client unlawfully.
As a result of the unlawful stop, the lawyer at The Weiland Firm, PLC successfully argued for a reduction of the charge from a DUI to a Virginia reckless driving charge. As such, our client saved thousands of dollars in future insurance costs, avoided the employment stigma of a DUI conviction, and saved himself from the many ramifications that come with a DUI conviction in Virginia.
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