Virginia DWI science must be understood and used to the defendant’s advantage, says Fairfax DUI lawyer

Virginia DWI science is essential for your attorney to understand and to use to your best advantage. As a Fairfax DUI lawyer, I am fortunate to continue to be learning both through such approaches as having worked with forensic scientists in over two hundred DWI defense cases, and to be a member of the National College of DUI Defense, which is one of two national organizations devoted to having defense lawyers transcend and use the science and advocacy to our best advantage against prosecutions alleging driving motor vehicles / cars under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs in prosecutions under Virginia Code § 18.2-266.

. The science typically involves breath and blood alcohol testing. The junk science involves field sobriety tests (variably called FSTs and SFSTs, with S standing for standardized), which tests I have administered on people who have consumed alcohol, through a small-group program that included one of the nation’s top trainers on FSTs to police.

The Virginia DWI science means that your DUI lawyer still needs to understand the science even though s/he did not attend medical school

Going to law school does not give an attorney a free pass to avoid science if they are going to be a Virginia DUI defense lawyer. When I decided that a medical career was not for me, I still decided to understand medical procedures, and joined my high school paramedics group, where I learned lifesaving skills, taking blood samples from people and analyzing the blood, and checking for overall health. For a few years, I included work for injured people, where I learned to review and understand medical reports and documents, and to deal with and understand physicians. The foregoing experience and learning has been invaluable to me in dealing with scientific professionals on the defense and prosecution side in defending against Fairfax DUI and other DWI prosecutions, including obtaining, reviewing, and understanding the data about my own clients’ blood and hospital records (including knowing when to include a scientific expert to help me understand such data in challenging Virginia DWI science ), and also to do the same to review the records of alleged victims of my clients in aggravated Virginia DUI cases that include serious injury allegedly caused by my clients’ alleged drinking and driving behavior.

The Department of Forensic Science scientist will call your Virginia DUI lawyer back

Part of owning the Virginia DWI science for the defense as best as possible is for your DUI lawyer to talk with the opposing witnesses as needed, including any scientist from the commonwealth’s Department of Forensic Science (DFS). Among all opposing witnesses in Virginia criminal cases, DFS witnesses may be among the most accessible and open. This accessibility and openness of such prosecution witnesses does not for a moment mean for your Virginia criminal defense lawyer to be anything other than fully powerful and unrelenting in cross examining such witnesses.

Field sobriety testing is junk science at best

Police often are trained fully or partially on field sobriety testing as taught by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the federal transportation department. NHTSA’s involvement with FST training does not by any means cloak SFSTs in any type of reliability. FST’s by their nature are junk science at best, and prejudicial to Virginia DUI defendants at worst. Nonetheless, as a Fairfax DUI lawyer, I know that the only option in my dealing with FSTs is to challenge their admissibility into evidence, and to own and defang such evidence by the time of trial. FSTs are not Virginia DWI science, I argue.

Fairfax DUI lawyer Jonathan L. Katz is uncompromising in fighting for your best defense against Virginia DUI, felony, and misdemeanor prosecutions. For your free in-person initial confidential consultation with Jon Katz, call 703-383-1100.