If I were to compile guidance for law enforcement officers and judges on “what not to do” in an impaired driving case, I’d be sure to include excerpts from two cases decided by the court of appeals this week: State v. Petty and State v. Taylor. Let’s start with Taylor, reserving discussion of Petty for a later post. The defendant in Taylor, then the chief deputy of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department, interfered with the criminal processing of a doctor arrested for impaired driving. The doctor, whose medical practice employed the defendant’s girlfriend, was stopped after he drove past a checkpoint. The doctor smelled of alcohol, admitted to consuming several alcohol beverages, showed signs of impairment, and refused to blow into an Alco-Sensor. He was arrested for impaired driving and taken to the sheriff’s office for a chemical analysis of his breath. That chemical analysis never occurred, however. Instead, when the doctor arrived at the sheriff’s department, the defendant (who upon hearing of the doctor’s arrest left his home for the sheriff’s department in the early morning hours) took the doctor into his office. The two spent twenty minutes alone before the defendant emerged and requested that the arresting officer bring to him an Alco-Sensor (a device the defendant was not trained to use). After obtaining the Alco-Sensor, the defendant returned to his office, where he and the doctor remained for another twenty minutes. The defendant then informed the arresting officer that the doctor had blown a 0.07 on an Alco-Sensor [...]
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