It is perfectly fine to alleviate an officer’s concerns by offering to get a ride home with a friend or take a cab.  If they accuse you of knowing that you should not be driving, let them know that you absolutely do not agree that you are impaired in any way, but that you realize the officer is trying to do his job, and you are more than willing to cooperate in every way by obtaining alternative transportation home.

Even if you “play by the rules” all the way through the traffic stop, and even if you really are not impaired by alcohol, you may still be arrested.  However, it is important that you still remain calm.  Police officers are charged with the responsibility of keeping society safe, and if they have any suspicion that you have or will commit a crime, it is their responsibility to arrest you.  It does not mean that you will actually be charged or go to trial. It does mean, however, that you will be asked to consent to alcohol concentration tests.  If an officer smells alcohol on your breath or if you admit to having drinks before driving, you are more likely to be arrested.

Remember, the only true way to avoid being arrested for a DWI is to not drink and drive. Anyone who has had even one drink and then gets behind the wheel runs the risk of being detained or arrested for a DWI.

If you are stopped by police, remain calm and polite. Do not admit to any wrongdoing, whether it be a traffic violation or drinking before driving.  Remember that your behavior may affect whether or not you are further detained by the officer.
Willingly comply with providing your license and proof of insurance/registration card to the officer.  Do not, however, agree to any field sobriety testing.  Be polite, but firmly refuse. Do not get out of the vehicle unless you are ordered to (not requested to, but required to) by the officer.

Ask to contact your attorney immediately, and offer to get a ride home or take a cab if the officer is concerned.  Be clear about your reasons for doing this – that you are attempting to cooperate with the officer, but do not agree with his or her assessment of your impairment.

Refusing an alcohol concentration test may be admissible as evidence against you and will result in up to a two-year license suspension.  Remember that in some cases, such as when there is an accident or a death, you may be compelled to comply with alcohol concentration testing. In the next chapter, we will go over in more detail what happens if you get arrested.

This post contains excerpts from The DWI Book, the definitive guide to protecting your rights in the face of New Hampshire’s tough DWI/DUI laws.

Be polite, provide your identification and vehicle registration, and answer necessary questions shortly and succinctly.  Do not try to explain your way out of the stop, do not offer additional information, and do not attempt to argue with the officer.  Never volunteer where you were, what you were doing, or how much you had to drink.
Even more importantly, do not curse or argue with the officer.  Realize that, while you are stopped, the officer will be looking for any clues that you are too impaired to drive.  Your behavior can be a clue and may be accepted as reasonable cause to conduct additional testing or to arrest you.  Be polite to the officer, remain as calm as possible, and remember that whatever you do or say may find its way into a courtroom as very damaging evidence if you are arrested or charged with DWI.

To read more, stay tuned for Part 2: Field Sobriety Tests

This post contains excerpts from The DWI Book, the definitive guide to protecting your rights in the face of New Hampshire’s tough DWI/DUI laws.

New Hampshire Automobile Insurance Law

New Hampshire is one of the few states that do not require car owners to carry insurance. Owners must, however, satisfy New Hampshire’s Financial Responsibility requirements if they elect not to carry insurance. When they register their vehicle with the DMV, they must file an “Owner’s Certificate,” using the SR22 form provided. This then becomes proof that if they are at fault in an accident, they are financially capable of meeting the state’s minimum insurance limits.

What is the Value of Uninsured Motorist Coverage?

In the above scenario, if the wrong-doer does not meet New Hampshire’s financial requirements, he will face possible suspension of his license. According the New Hampshire’s DMV, “If the combined damages are over $1,000.00 or there is personal injury and the uninsured motorist is at fault, N.H. can suspend the uninsured motorist’s driver license and registration privileges.”

Fortunately, you do have automobile insurance and, because New Hampshire requires it, you automatically have Uninsured Motorist coverage. This covers accident-related expenses if hit by an uninsured driver, or a hit-and-run.
It’s important to know that there are two types of uninsured coverage – bodily injury (UMBI) and property damage (UMPD).

The first covers your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering – a life saver if you don’t have health insurance.

The second covers charges for towing, storage and car repair. If the car is totaled, the insurance pays the retail value of your car at the time of the accident. UMPD also provides for a rental car, and covers any property destroyed in the accident (computer, eyeglasses, etc.).

What if My Uninsured Motorist Coverage is Insufficient?

Unfortunately, with the high cost of health care, your policy may not come close to providing you with funds required to pay your medical bills and future treatment needs. You’ll receive bills for the ambulance, the ER, the ER doctor, radiology, your hospital stay, the attending physician, and possibly for consulting doctors and additional radiology tests. If you required surgery, you’ll get bills from the surgeon, the anesthesiologist, lab work, rehabilitation, outpatient physical therapy and prescription medication.

The above state of affairs develops very quickly and very frequently. Without health insurance and perhaps without the ability to go back to work anytime soon, you could find yourself in a mountain of debt.

If this happens to you, consult with a personal injury attorney who is well-versed in New Hampshire laws. He will go after the offending driver and will conduct an assets investigation. This investigation will yield information on the driver’s financial situation, including cash, bank accounts, and property. He will do everything in his power to put you back on your feet again.

Field sobriety tests can include everything from being asked to touch your nose with the tip of your finger, to reciting the alphabet backwards and/or doing mathematical calculations.  Do not do them!  Do not be belligerent with the officer, but politely refuse to take the field sobriety tests.

Field sobriety tests are far too dependent upon one officer’s subjective judgment and do not fully rely any kind of science.  Your performance on these exercises may depend more on how tired you are or how coordinated you are rather than on how much alcohol you have consumed.  There are circumstances under which you may not pass them even if you have had nothing to drink.  Not only will the officer testify against you at a trial, but quite often a camera captures these tests on video (which is also admissible), and the evidence can be damning.

This post contains excerpts from The DWI Book, the definitive guide to protecting your rights in the face of New Hampshire’s tough DWI/DUI laws.

The bad news, according to the Century Council – an organization of distillers dedicated to fighting drunk drivers – is that even though total cases of DWI declined in that period, New Hampshire showed a 32.4% increase in DWI-caused fatalities. In 2007, 34 people died in alcohol related car crashes, and in 2008, there were 45 such deaths.

The worse news, according to this report, is that even though underage DWI deaths declined across the U.S. during 2007 and 2008, New Hampshire saw almost a 300% spike in deaths resulting from impaired drivers in the16- to 20-year-old population. This percentage is very misleading. New Hampshire is a small state (population of 1.3 million) and only 8 underage drivers and/or passengers died in 2008, and 3 in 2007. Still, statistics show trends and the public should take heed. Even one underage death is too many.

DWI Law in New Hampshire: Fines and Penalties

New Hampshire has been very proactive in trying to lower DWI-fatality rates. Following is just a sampling of the fines and penalties one can expect if caught driving while intoxicated.

• First Offense — $500 minimum fine plus 24% penalty totaling $620; suspended license for nine months; completion of impaired driver intervention program.
• Second Offense (if within 2 years of previous DWI conviction) –  $750 fine plus 24% penalty totaling $930; minimum of 30 days in jail; three-year minimum suspended license; 12-month period requiring ignition interlock device on vehicles.
• Third Offense — $750 minimum fine; minimum of 180 days in jail; 28-day minimum stay at a residential treatment program; license suspended indefinitely.

Punishment is greater if convicted of Aggravated DWI, such as driving 30 mph over the speed limit; causing an accident resulting in serious injury; attempting to flee a law enforcement officer; driving with a passenger 16 years or younger; or having a blood alcohol level (BAC) of .16 or higher.

Blood Alcohol Levels (BAC)

You are considered a DWI case if you have a BAC of .08 or higher; if you are under 21 with a BAC rate of .02 or higher; or if you driving a commercial vehicle with a BAC of .04 or higher. It’s difficult to know how many drinks you can have and still be under the legal limit, so don’t drink if you know you are going to drive.

If you arrested for DWI, however, you have certain rights. Call a DWI lawyer as soon as possible who has experience dealing with DWI laws in New Hampshire. You want an attorney that understands NH DWI laws inside and out; knows the technical aspects of the Intoxilyzer 5000 (a breathalyzer test), one who knows how to keep you out of jail, and one that can work to prevent your license suspension.

The Supreme Court of New Hampshire has time and again upheld the implied consent rule and admitted the evidence of sobriety field tests and blood-alcohol chemical tests even when the defendant has motioned for the results to be suppressed.

When Should You Refuse Testing?
Obviously, having a DWI conviction on your record is something you want to avoid at all costs, and the prosecutor will have a more difficult time proving your guilt without the solid evidence of the results of a blood-alcohol chemical test to present. However, refusing to submit to the test results in an automatic 180-day license suspension or more – even if you are later found not guilty of the actual DWI charge.

Additionally, even if you refuse testing, if the police officer can provide enough other evidence to a judge that there is reasonable cause to believe that you are under the influence of alcohol, then a warrant ordering you to provide a blood sample or submit to other testing may be issued. Even without alcohol concentration testing, the officer’s testimony about your behavior, as well as other evidence or witnesses can still be used to convince a judge or jury of your guilt.

Furthermore, if you are involved in an accident, particularly one with injuries and/or a resulting death, there will most likely be no way to avoid the testing. You do have the right to have enough breath, urine, or blood taken so that you can have the second sample independently tested, and the officers must provide you with the results of their testing within 48 hours, otherwise the results may be ruled inadmissible as evidence.

Can Your Refusal Be Used as Evidence?
If you refuse to consent to an alcohol concentration test, that refusal may be admitted as evidence against you at your trial.  Refusing to take the test can make it appear as though the only reason you would refuse would be because you knew your alcohol concentration was over the legal limit.  While some states instruct their juries to ignore the refusal and admit it only as proof that a test was offered, New Hampshire allows it as evidence that can be used against you and you will be instructed of this if you have been arrested and refuse to submit to the test.

Attempts to suppress this evidence have been unsuccessful and the courts have consistently said that as long as the jury is instructed to consider the evidence and come to their own conclusions, it violates neither self-incrimination rights nor prevents the defendant from providing other evidence about why the test was refused.

This post contains excerpts from The DWI Book, the definitive guide to protecting your rights in the face of New Hampshire’s tough DWI/DUI laws.

Definition and Examples of Wrongful Death

Legally, a wrongful death is when someone’s negligence, or other unjust action, causes the death of another person.
In the skiing accident, the College allegedly shunned their responsibility by leaving the student, a beginning skier, unsupervised on a difficult trail.

In the boating accident, the wife’s wrongful-death attorney proved boat personnel continued  serving her husband alcohol even though he was clearly intoxicated.

Other examples of wrongful death can include car and airplane accidents, medical malpractice, an act of violence or murder, defective products, and work-related deaths due to dangerous working conditions or exposure to toxic substances.

Who Can File a Claim or Lawsuit in a Wrongful Death Case?

New Hampshire law states that only a family member can file a wrongful death lawsuit. This is because family members are usually the ones most affected by the death of the victim, emotionally and financially.

In New Hampshire, damages can be awarded on the basis of medical and funeral expenses, loss of companionship, loss of support and services, and loss of potential inheritance.

What You Need to Know Before Filing

Before filing a wrongful death claim or lawsuit, certain criteria must be met:

• There has to be a third party who was fully or partially responsible for the death.
• The third party must be shown to have been negligent.
• There must be surviving family members as beneficiaries, e.g. parents, spouses, children, or other dependents.
• Typically, proof of monetary damages are required, e.g., loss of income, because of the victim’s death.

The death of a family member is always tragic. It is one of the reasons why an experienced wrongful death attorney should be consulted. They can take care of your wrongful death lawsuit or claim without your active involvement.
If you think a family member suffered a wrongful death, please call an attorney to assist you in your difficult time.

Basically, if you drive in New Hampshire, whether or not you are licensed to drive by the state of New Hampshire, you have agreed that you will willingly comply with alcohol concentration tests, whether the request is for breath, blood or urine testing.

Refusing the Test
In New Hampshire, your refusal to take an alcohol concentration test can be admitted into evidence and used against you at your trial. In addition, if you are arrested and you refuse to take the alcohol concentration test requested by the officer, your license will be suspended for 180 days, even if you have no prior DWI conviction.  If you have a prior conviction – or even a prior refusal without a conviction – your license will be suspended for two years. Even worse, the suspension for refusing to take the alcohol concentration tests is not allowed to be served concurrently (at the same time) with any other punishment, but instead is an additional punishment that is tacked on to whatever other suspension you receive if convicted.  The suspension will be upheld even if you are found not guilty at your trial.

If you refuse to take the test, the officer will not force you to take it, but you will automatically lose your driving privileges in New Hampshire for doing so.  While you will have the right to appeal the suspension, the New Hampshire courts tend to support the implied consent regulation and uphold license suspensions.

Taking the Test
In the state of New Hampshire, if you take the alcohol concentration test and your results show an alcohol concentration above the legal limit, you will lose your license. However, while you must immediately surrender your license to the officer (both in the case of refusing to take the test and in the case of having results above the legal limit) the officer will issue you a 30-day temporary permit, because the suspension itself requires 30 days’ notice.  During the 30-day notice period, you can appeal the suspension. The burden of proof is on you as the petitioner to demonstrate that the stop should not have been made because the officer had no reasonable grounds to arrest you.

This post contains excerpts from The DWI Book, the definitive guide to protecting your rights in the face of New Hampshire’s tough DWI/DUI laws.

Alcohol impairs many of the judgments and reactions you need for driving. Police officers use these visible clues to determine your impairment. Police officers may use simple tests such as making you walk in a straight line or touch the tip of your nose with the tip of your finger, but those tests are just indicators of your coordination, and coordination is greatly affected by consumption of alcohol. These tests are called field sobriety tests.

Alcohol reduces your ability to stay focused, makes hand-eye coordination extremely difficult, and limits your peripheral sight.  It slows your ability to react to the things that happen while you are driving, such as traffic lights changing or quick movements from other vehicles.  Being impaired by alcohol also makes it more difficult to multitask: shifting while depressing the clutch, driving between designated lines on the road while maintaining the proper speed, or activating a signal before a turn while still managing to respond to traffic.  Actions such as these make it very easy for officers to recognize suspicious vehicles.

In 2007, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a nationwide campaign to reduce drinking and driving. You have probably heard the catch-phrase: “Over the Limit: Under Arrest” wherever you happen to live. The NHTSA provided training and marketing materials to police stations across the country; officers are more educated and motivated to remove dangerous drivers from the street, and unfortunately, a lot of social drinkers are getting caught up in the political pressure.

Stay tuned for Part 3: Dos and Dont’s of a Traffic Stop

This post contains excerpts from The DWI Book, the definitive guide to protecting your rights in the face of New Hampshire’s tough DWI/DUI laws.

Released quickly on a $30 – yes, only $30 — bond, and defying a protection order, he waited until his wife was out of the hospital, then shot and killed her when she went home to gather some things.

How could this have happened? Why was the bond so low? The answer is that under New Hampshire law, non-fatal strangulation is a crime of simple assault, punishable only as a misdemeanor.

Broadly, domestic abuse is defined as physical and/or emotional violence deliberately perpetrated on a family member or on people intimate with each other. The laws of each state differ in the matter, and some are so complex that sometimes an issue of domestic violence that should be included in the definition is excluded. Such was the situation in the crime described above.

Now, because of this case, a new law will likely soon be on the books, making non-fatal strangulation in New Hampshire a second-degree assault (a class B felony) punishable by 3-1/2 to 7 years in prison.

If passed, New Hampshire will be one of 22 states recognizing it as a felony. Had this law been in force at the time of the woman’s initial attack, her husband would not have been able to post bond so quickly, if at all.

Domestic Violence Statistics

It is a difficult image to erase once you have seen someone bearing bumps, bruises, cuts, or worse from domestic violence. Yet domestic abuse is astonishingly common. One in every four women in the United States reports experiencing violence by a current or former spouse or boyfriend at some point in her life.

According to a recent article released by the N. H. Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence, in a given day nearly 300 domestic violence victims in New Hampshire can require shelter, counseling, legal advocacy and children’s support groups.
The Family Violence Prevention Fund recently issued the following statistics:

• 84% of spousal abuse victims are woman, as are 86% of victims of dating partner abuse.
• In the U.S., more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.
• Approximately one in three adolescent girls in the United States is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner – a figure that far exceeds victimization rates for other types of violence affecting youth.
• Females who are 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk of non-fatal intimate partner violence.

Domestic violence and abuse are very emotional issues for the victim and the accused. Once friends and family members become involved, it is sometimes impossible to ferret out the truth.

If you have been accused of committing domestic violence, consult immediately with a domestic violence lawyer. Only an experienced and knowledgeable attorney will be able to help you prove your case.