Florida Board Certified Expert in Criminal Law - Broward County DUI Defense Lawyer
 |
|
|
|
|
Field Sobriety exercises
 Roadside
field sobriety tests ("FSTs") are commonly used by police officers
in DUI investigations to determine whether a driver is under the
influence of alcohol. Typically, they consist of a battery of 3-5
excercises, such as walk-and turn, one-leg stand, "nystagmus" ("follow
the pencil with your eyes"), finger-to-nose, alphabet recitation, "Rohmberg" (eyes-closed-position-of-attention),
etc. The officer may subjectively decide whether the individual "failed",
or he may decide after applying recent federal "standardized" scoring.
These DUI tests have an aura of scientific credibility. Unfortunately,
however, they have no real basis in science and are almost useless
in a drunk driving case.
- First, as any traffic officer or DUI attorney knows,
the decision to arrest is made at the driver’s window;
the FSTs given supposedly to determine probable cause to
arrest are actually for the purpose of gathering evidence.
- Second, since the officer has already made up his
mind, his subjective decision as to whether a person passed
or failed field sobriety tests is suspect: as with any human,
he will "see" what he expects to see.
- Third, the conditions under which the field sboriety
tests are taken almost guarantee failure: usually late at
night, possibly cold, along a graveled or sloped roadside,
with bright headlights from passing cars (setting up wind
waves), the officer’s flashlight and patrol car’s
strobe and headlights providing the lighting -- and given
to a person who is nervous, frightened and completely unfamiliar
with the tests.
- Fourth, field sobriety tests are irrelevant and,
in fact, designed for failure.
What scientific basis exists to validate FSTs in a DUI investigation?
Only a "study" by a private business firm, the "Southern California
Research Institute", with a grant from the federal government
to find a "standardized" battery of usable DUI tests. To earn
their money, SCRI came up with three tests which, they said,
were not foolproof but were much better than all of the other
FSTs that were being used.
|
|
Yet after some study even this company concluded
that, using the three standardized tests, 47 percent of the subjects
tested would have been arrested for DUI -- even though they were
under the .10% limit.1 The company was
sent back to the drawing board and, in 1981 came up with some better
figures: only 32 percent of those who "failed" the tests were actually
innocent.2
Well, SCRI was paid to put their stamp of approval on a set of field
sobriety tests. But what has been the reaction of the (non-profit)
scientific community? In 1991, Dr. Spurgeon Cole of Clemson University
conducted a study on the accuracy of FSTs. His staff videotaped individuals
performing six common field sobriety tests, then showed the tapes to
14 police officers and asked them to decide whether the suspects had "had
too much to drink and drive". Unknown to the officers, the blood-alcohol
concentration of each of the 21 DUI subjects was .00%, stone sober.
The results: the officers gave their opinion that 46% of these innocent
people were too drunk to drive! In other words, the field sobriety
tests were hardly more accurate at detecting intoxication than flipping
a coin.3
1 Burns and Moskowitz, Psychophysical Tests for
DWI Arrest: Final Report, DOT-HS-802-424, NHTSA, 1977.
2 Tharp, Burns and Moskowitz, Development and Field Sobriety Test
of Psychophysical Tests for DWI Arrests: Final Report, DOT-HS-805-864,
NHTSA, 1981.
3 Cole and Nowaczyk, "Field Sobriety Tests: Are they Designed for
Failure?", 79 Perceptual and Motor Skills Journal 99 (1994).
|
|
|