My client, a tall woman in her 40s, told me that she came to town to have a few drinks at a bar. There were major gray areas to the story that she told me, but I put together the pieces. What I can share with you is this: An accident occurred a few blocks away from the bar in the intersection of a busy street. It was dark, and the car moved out of the intersection into a local drug store parking lot. Police arrived shortly thereafter, while my client was standing outside the vehicle waiting for them to arrive. She said that she wasn't driving. When asked who was driving, she told the officers that it was a woman she had met at the bar. She gave nothing more than a first name.
There was no doubt that she was intoxicated.
We went to jury trial, with the prosecutor convinced that he was going to win this case easy. Lots of people claim that someone else was driving following a DUI accident. It's an easy excuse, and it comes to mind immediately to most drunk people. It normally isn't a very good defense. But in this case...
Two witnesses to the accident admitted that they never saw the driver. The officer took the stand and proceeded, in great detail, to explain to the jury how intoxicated my client was and how poorly she performed on field sobriety tests. I asked him only a few questions:
Q. In your report, you indicated that the driver's seat was pulled up very close to the steering wheel, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. You indicated that this would be consistent with a short woman driving the vehicle, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Ms. [my client], would you please stand up?
Q. Officer, she doesn't appear very short, does she?
A. No, but I can't really tell how tall she is from here.
Q. She's taller than me, right?
A. Yes, but she might be wearing heels.
Q. Well, let's turn to your DI-177 form that you filled out. You wrote down how tall she is, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And how tall did you report her height to be in that form?
A. 5'11.
Q. And you wrote out a traffic citation, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And you wrote down how tall she was on that ticket, right?
A. Yes. 5'11.
Q. She's not very short, is she?
A. No.
Q. And you described this seat, in this case, to be merely inches away from steering wheel, correct?
A. Yes.
Q. And it probably wouldn't have even been possible for my very tall client to fit behind the wheel of that car, correct?
A. Correct.
Putting the story together behind the scenes, I figured out who was driving, but that's not important. My client was actually innocent, and the jury returned a NOT GUILTY verdict.