Innovative DUI Trial Tools

Description

How the Best Lawyers Consistently Win DUI Cases

To win regularly, you need to capture both the hearts and the minds of jurors

The mind is simpler to persuade. You capture jurors’ minds through your cross examination, if the defense is one of prosecutorial problems … bad machine or bad procedures, or through your witnesses if the defense is something else … GERD, necessity, etc.

The heart is more difficult. To persuade the heart, you need to give jurors a simple answer to the question posed by family and friends, “How come you let the drunk go?”  You need to make jurors want to let your client off.

Innovative DUI Trial Tools provides strategies and language for persuading both hearts and minds.  These methods and arguments have succeeded in trial after trial, and can work for you.

Attention-getting openings

You can’t convince them if they aren’t listening to you.  Here is how to grab jurors in the first sentence and get them thinking that a fellow citizen has been falsely charged:

• Providing a strong argument, not a trial road map.  §3:04
• How to make it detailed and personal.  §3:04
• Filling in the blanks with positive information.  §3:07
• Pointing out the problems with the prosecution’s case.  §3:08
• Boosting the officer and prosecution expert so you can knock them down on cross.  §3:10
• How to use surprise to your advantage.  §3:11

Nine pattern openings

• Deliberate refusal.  §3:21
• Refusal due to confusion.  §3:21
• Who was driving?  §3:20
• Incorrect administration of field sobriety tests.  §3:22
• So what?  §3:22
• Rising blood alcohol.  §3:23
• Keeping an open mind.  §3:24
• It wasn’t my client.  §3:25
• The missing element.  §3:26
• And quick ideas for the crime, burdens, facts, law, and client testimony.  §3:28

Intellectually-persuasive cross-examinations

Each discussion begins with an explanation of the why and how of the strategy, then lists the points to be made with that adverse witness, and finishes with the cross-examination questions to ask:

• Slipping in drinking receipts as past recollection refreshed.  §5:14
• Unfair administration of field sobriety tests.  §5:25
• Showing improper administration of one-leg stand, heel-to-toe, and horizontal gaze nystagmus.  §5:26
• The 16 common attacks on breath tests.  §5:41
• Using partition evidence to refute a charge of driving while impaired.  §5:43
• Failure of the machine to measure breath temperature.  §5:45
• Using a steepling example to criticize the lack of two tests.  §5:47
• Failure of the machine to rule out interfering substances.  §5:50
• Faulty slope detection test for mouth alcohol.  §5:53
• False read in diabetes, hypoglycemia, and diet cases.  §5:54
• Exaggerated score due to GERD.  §5:55
• Presenting a rising alcohol defense.  §5:60
• Destroying presumptions in a rising alcohol defense.  §5:63

Closings which grab heart and mind

Of the two goals of DUI closings, the first — anticipating and countering prosecution arguments — is not difficult because DUI prosecutors are usually new and take a by-the-numbers approach. The second goal — convincing jurors your client is not guilty — is harder. The following strategies and language promote both goals.

• Neutralizing the prosecutor’s closing.  §7:02
• Directly addressing the DUI defense stigma.  §7:05
• How to use the story close.  §7:20
• Using the here and now.  §7:23
• Making an emotional appeal.  §7:24
• The point-by-point rules closing.  §7:30
• Picking apart with the field sobriety tests.  §7:35
• Putting a list hook in your story close.  §7:37
• The “piece of junk” closing.  §7:50

Quick but memorable closing language for

• Bloodshot eyes.  §7:21
• Machine reliability.  §7:64
• Rising alcohol.  §7:65
• Circumstantial evidence.  §7:66
• Reasonable doubt.  §7:67
• Missing element.  §7:68
• Disagreement in deliberations.  §7:70
• No testimony from State’s expert.  §7:71
• Burden of proof.  §7:80

Four complete closings

• Refusal. §7:100
• Breath test. §7:101
• High BAC. §7:102
• No test or other guy drove. §7:103

With this update, new author Jonathan Dichter shares some of his most successful DUI trial strategies.

CHAPTER 1 PRE-TRIAL DISCOVERY AND MOTION PRACTICE

Three new motions to suppress FST evidence:

• Motion to Suppress Breath Test Results—Observation Period
• Motion to Dismiss—Police Misconduct
• Motion to Suppress Breath Test Results—Manifest Injustice Affecting Fair Trial

NEW CHAPTER 1A CRAFTING YOUR CASE THEORY AND NARRATIVE STRUCTURE (WITH CASE STUDY)

This chapter touches on all aspects of a trial from jury selection to closing argument and discusses how storytelling fits into these trial skills.

• The power of story
• The science of story
• Six rules of storytelling
• How to seize the white hat
• How to construct a good theme
• Working backward from your conclusion
• Carrying your theme through the trial
• Your opening statement
• Creating engaging first lines
• Telling your story through cross-examination
• Your closing argument
• Case study and trial transcript

CHAPTER 4 CROSS-EXAMINATION

• The ARIDE program and cross-examination of the ARIDE officer

NEW APPENDIX G STRATEGIES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR ZOOM AND REMOTE HEARINGS IN THE WAKE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

AND MORE!