To Blow or Not to Blow – Beat your Ohio DUI Charge

First off, there is a distinction that needs to be drawn between a test that they have you blow into by the roadside (a Portable Breath Test or PBT) and a test back at the station. You are under no legal obligation and there is no penalty for refusing to blow at the roadside. It is only once you are back at the station that things become more complicated.

It used to be easy for attorneys advising clients in drunk driving cases when it came to this question. In the old days, the answer was to never blow. The reason for that was that it is easy to convict a person of driving with a concentration of alcohol in their blood, breath or urine above a certain level if you have a test result from a measuring device that you can put before the jury. Those folks just weren’t going to get any deals.

It is a lot harder for a prosecutor to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that you were driving drunk if you did not take the test and the video shows that you weren’t slurring your words or acting the fool. Those folks were getting a lot of deals.

Add to that the new mandatory incarceration terms for people testing above .170 in Ohio and you figure how are they ever going to prove that if I don’t blow.

In the old days, the only penalty for refusing to take the test was loss of your driving privileges for a year, but that was somewhat offset in that attorneys could get limited driving privileges for their clients to go to places like work or school.

These days though, if you have a prior refusal to test, or if you have previously been convicted of drunk driving, you face automatic jail terms for refusing the test back at the station.

Lawyers are presently challenging these draconian new laws at the appellate court level, but there is as yet no word on whether they are proper or not.

So if you are in this boat, you might want to consider blowing.