Daily Archives: September 21, 2011

A question I get asked all too often as a Houston DWI Attorney is “should I take a breath test if I am stopped and have been drinking”.  The simple answer is, no!A question I get asked all too often as a Houston DWI Attorney is “should I take a breath test if I am stopped and have been drinking”.  The simple answer is, no!

Giving a breath test in a DWI case is essentially giving the officer, and the district attorney’s office more evidence to use against you if you happen to fail the test.  If you do not think you are going to pass, then there is no reason to take the test at all.  I am confident that any DWI Lawyer in Houston would give you the same advice.

Many people are asked to do sobriety tests, and even if they do wonderful the officers still “take them down to jail for further evaluation”.  So basically, you do everything that the officer asks you to do and all is gets you is arrested!   Why would you continue to cooperate with law enforcement when you are only seeing negative results?  It does not make any sense.

On top of that, your case is much more likely to get dismissed if you do not take the breath test (assuming you do not get blood drawn).  The district attorney’s office is usually very reluctant to dismiss a case if there is a breath test above .08 (but will dismiss cases time to time).  If you do not take the test, and do good on the standard field sobriety tests (or refuse those too!), there is much less evidence for a prosecutor to use against you.  They feel much better letting cases like this go as opposed to cases where some machine is telling them (and potentially jurors) that you were drunk on the night in question.

So to sum it all up, unless you have had absolutely nothing to drink just do not take a breath test!  You put yourself, and your Houston DWI Attorney, in a much better situation if you just refuse!