Why Is The Police Officer Speaking So Much During My DWI Arrest?
It is common knowledge that people act differently when they are videotaped The Houston DWI Officers are equipped with video machines in their vehicles to record the stop and the field sobriety tests that they request a person to do during a dwi stop. Most of the time during the arrest the officer is the only person that knows that everything is being videotaped. How a person does during the videotaping of the field sobriety tests is crucial. In my experience as a Houston DWI lawyer, these videotapes are poor in quality and only show the obvious mis-steps that a person commits during the field sobriety tests. They fail to show how well a person performs during the investigation. The DWI officers have taken it upon themselves to act as play by play announcers during the time that a person is doing the tests. This is distracting to the person trying to perform the tests and clearly could be viewed as one sided. The officer only remarks on something the person may have done wrong without ever mentioning all the things that person is doing correctly.
Recently, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals, the highest appellate court in Texas, has held that the practice of the police officer commenting on the a person's performance during the DWI field sobriety test is hearsay. Therefore, the commentary will not be heard by a jury during trial. For the entire opinion click here.
