Drunk Driving Cases
Attorney William C. Head

Case 29
State v. V.D.K.
Cobb County State Court

On April 4, 2003, V.D.K. was driving along a rainy Sandy Plains Road on her way home from having a few after dinner drinks with a fellow employee when she lost control of her 2001 Toyota in the rain. When another car veered into her lane, her car careened off the guardrail to the right, hydroplaned to the left across the grass median and ended up with the front end against a concrete retaining wall. It was about 7:30 PM when the police were called to the scene of the accident.

V.D.K. had flagged down a passing motorist for help. This woman took her home, a distance of a couple of miles.

The arresting officer came to the accident location and found that the driver had departed. He gave police dispatch the tag number of the wrecked vehicle, and the police dispatched a second officer to her home. There, the officer found V.D.K. walking around from the back yard of her home to the front door of her home. He asked her if she had been involved in a wreck. She said she had. He then told her she needed to come back to the scene with him. She went back to the scene, at his insistence.

The first officer attempted to get her to perform some field sobriety tests, which she declined, based on advice she had received from her attorney for her last DUI arrest. The officer arrested her despite the fact that she did not field evaluations. The officer then read her the Georgia implied consent advisements. She stated that she wanted a blood test. The officer asked for blood and urine, which she agreed to take. She was then taken to Cobb County jail, where she was later able to post bond and be released.

The blood test came back from the GBI several months later as a 0.23 BAC. The legal standard was 0.08 at the time of her arrest.

V.D.K.'s two prior DUI offenses within 5 years meant that a guilty plea or a trial loss would take away her driver's license for 5 years. Mr. Head advised her to elect a bench trial. V.D.K. did not testify.

On September 18th, 2003, she was found not guilty by the trial judge when Mr. Head was able to block the blood test results from being admitted due to a flaw in the chain of custody. She was found guilty of leaving the scene of an accident involving property damage and fined by the judge and placed on probation. She served no additional jail time at all, despite an original recommendation by the prosecutor of "work release" jail time of 12 months.