This is yet another example of why attorneys who believe everything they read in an officer's arrest report are not doing enough to WIN freedom for their client.
If you want to know what actually happens during a implied consent process, then you must subpoena the video. And then you must watch and listen carefully to it. Every single second of it.
If you don't, then you will miss your client inquiring whether the officer was going to request a blood draw instead of a breath sample. It lasted all of a few seconds. Easy to miss if you aren't paying attention.
Because the arresting officer somehow neglected to include this critical inquiry in his report, had we relied only on the written narrative, this critical inquiry would have gone unnoticed.
That seemingly harmless question triggered a very important right under Iowa law to independent chemical testing. A right, which, if ignored by law enforcement, often leads to the suppression of any breath test obtained by the officer. When you couple that with field sobriety tests that were incorrectly administered and little evidence of impaired driving, you have reasaonable doubt as to intoxication.
Under these circumstances, county attorneys often amend or dismiss the OWI charge. That is exactly what happend here for my client in Story County on March 6, 2019.
The attorneys at GRL roll up their sleves to uncover anything that can help a client's case. We don't just take the officers at their word.
