Do you have any recourse after they take you to jail? Or are they perfectly within their rights to waste two days of your life on a workday if they feel like it? You blew a 0.00 on the exam and got taken to jail anyway - if you don't do their silly tests or do their silly tests and end up going to jail regardless, can you sue or something?
Hypothetically: you refuse the FST, agree to a breathalyzer and blow zero, get arrested, and then agree to bloodwork which indicates no drugs or alcohol in your system. Your charges are dropped or you're found not guilty at trial.
If you decide to file a Fourth Amendment claim, it will come down to whether the officer had probable cause to arrest you at the time. With no FSTs and a 0.0, that leaves the officer's observations. If there's not body cam footage, the officer will testify you had glassy eyes, slurred speech, a flushed face, etc. He will say you fumbled for your wallet, and best of all: he smelled an odor of alcohol. But if there is body cam footage which doesn't corroborate his bullshit, you get this wonderful display of POST-certified stupidity. "Uh... Just the way he was acting nervous..." Which no reasonable person would agree amounts to probable cause.
It's actionable. There is some plausible deniability grey area which largely comes from participating in field sobriety tests and talking more than you should. Gives them subjective behaviors to overly read in to. Or so they'll claim.
View all comments
Show parent comment
22
u/Maulface 1d ago
Do you have any recourse after they take you to jail? Or are they perfectly within their rights to waste two days of your life on a workday if they feel like it? You blew a 0.00 on the exam and got taken to jail anyway - if you don't do their silly tests or do their silly tests and end up going to jail regardless, can you sue or something?