Ohio Criminal Defense Lawyers

Butler county is the newest part of Ohio ready to deploy automatic license plate scanning technology to passively scan for traffic scofflows and other criminal activity. The Butler county Sherrif’s department is added to the growing list of law enforcement agencies using these systems, including the Ohio Highway Patrol and Toledo PD.

As noted in the news article, these devices scan every license plate near the police vehicle scanner, whether stationary or moving. If it picks up a plate that is matched with a stolen vehicle, or identifies a car that is owned by someone with a suspended driver’s license or outstanding criminal warrant for bail jumping, the officer is instantly alerted.

These license plate scanning systems can be configured to match any law enforcement or government database. Some municipalities choose to use these systems to find and boot vehicles whose owners may owe money for parking tickets or back taxes.  But this flexibility and the amount of data collected can raise concerns about the civil liberties protections of this constant monitoring.

Certainly few would object to increased police efficiency in finding cars flagged for an amber altert, or stolen vehicles. But data is collected and stored on many thousands of cars who have done nothing wrong. Yet with the GPS location matching, the government knows exactly where your car was at what time. This data can be stored indefinitely, and shared with any government agency to be searched retroactively.

These systems will only become cheaper and more widespread. In the very near future, they will likely be standard equipment on all police and governent vehicles in Ohio and nationwide.

You simply can’t expect to go anywhere unnoticed anymore.

And this fact is critical to anyone who thinks they can get away with ignored a driver’s license suspension or failure to appear notification.

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If you are accused of a crime in Ohio, call our defense attorneys for a free legal consultation and evaluation of the charges against you. There is no obligation for the intial consultation.

California drunk driving defense guru Lawrence Taylor weighs in on the Kafkaesque absurdity of Ohio’s breathalyzer laws in OVI cases. It is true that a defendant accused of drunk driving/OVI in Ohio has no ability to challenge any breathalyzer evidence against him. The machines are deemed infallible and unchallengeable in court.

Breath test machines have known flaws that have been documented for years. Certain foods and medical conditions like GERD/acid reflux can cause false positives.

The machines’ own manufacturers have strict maintenance requirements and require regular recalibration, yet whether that maintenance was actually done in your case isn’t questionable.

The manufacture may update the software, and any software update can have bugs, yet an OVI defense lawyer can’t question whether the machine was retested and re-certifed, and under what conditions.

No, under Ohio law, breath test machines are miraculous devices that dispense divine and flawless judgment.

This is a fact that defense lawyers and drunk driving defendants in Ohio have been stuck with for 25 years.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t defense options, or that a lawyer can’t win drunk driving/OVI cases, or help you get a reduced sentence. But it does present continuing challenges and extreme burdens to those simple wishing to exercise constitutional rights and freedoms in a legal defense.

If you have been arrested for OVI in Ohio, please contact our experienced criminal defense attorneys today for a complimentary defense evaluation. We can go over the facts of your case, suggest any possible defenses, and determine if any police or legal procedures were violated that lead to you being stopped.

Drunk Driving/OVI cases can still be won in Ohio, but it isn’t done by challenging a breath test failure.

To find out what we can do in your specific OVI case, please contact us today. Don’t wait, the advice and consultation is free.