DUI Case: Police Officer Accused of Impaired Driving

Marc is a police officer. One night, while he was in his car behind the wheel in a parking waiting for his friends to come out of a bar, police officers came to him and had suspicions that he was intoxicated by alcohol. Since Marc was behind the wheel of his car, they arrested him and brought him to the police station. The results of the breathalyzer tests were high (184 mg and 175 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood). Marc’s career was greatly threatened. Knowing the reputation of Mr Benoît Gariépy, attorney at law, in drinking and driving cases, he consulted him.

Our lawyer noticed immediately several abnormalities in the certificate of the qualified technician who operated the breathalyzer. The first name and the date of birth written on the certificate where not associated to Marc. Knowing that the prosecution rarely make the qualified technician testify in impaired driving cases and prefer to only deposit the certificate itself as evidence of the results obtained, Mr Gariépy simply pleaded that the results were not Marc’s ones, but those from another person with a different name and different date of birth. As for the first count of impaired driving, some police officers noticed symptoms of intoxication, while some others never detected anything particular which raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of the judge who dismissed all DUI charges against Marc.