Minnesota DWI Defense Blog

It's been a few years since a manufacturing error has caused problems for blood alcohol testing in Minnesota . . . but here we are. We've been provided with what appears to be a valid recall notice for the type of tube used in Minnesota BCA testing kits. The notice is dated June 4, 2021, and impacts kits that expire in September of 2022. Read More

Just in time for the Fourth of July, here's some independence to celebrate: Minnesota just eliminated special series "whiskey plates" in almost every circumstance. Read More

Does Minnesota still need so-called "whiskey plates?" Nobody seems to have a good reason for keeping them around, yet they still exist. For now. Read More

Minnesota continues to struggle over whether or not to legalize recreational marijuana. Proponents point to significant tax revenues, as well as all of the money the criminal justice system will save, while adding that the drug itself is arguably no more dangerous that alcohol. Opponents fear an increase in crime, including driving while impaired by drugs (DUID). Is that a legitimate concern? Read More

Minnesota's Supreme Court recently issued a ruling addressing what the governement does (and does not) have to prove when charging someone with a DWI based upon a driver's use of prescription drugs. And you'd be surprised how easy it can be to be charged with a DWI just for taking your prescription according to your doctors directions. Read More

When a DWI alcohol test is taken more than 2 hours after driving, there are solid scientific reasons to discard that test result -- primarily the fact that the government is going to try to "fill in the blanks" with that test result in a very unscientific manner. We wrote the playbook on fighting these types of tests, and your choice of attorney may be the difference between a lucky victory and . . . a different end result. Read More

It’s easy to live in a comfortable black-and-white world until reality forces us to see the color gray. One example of our gray reality is being arrested and charged with a crime. Even the most die-hard law-and-order types, who say that if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, will suddenly want the best lawyer money can buy if they find themselves accused of bad behavior. Now let's talk about pot. Read More

"Specialty Courts" are becoming less special and more common across Minnesota And the trend is providing a great deal of long-overdue care for our veterans. Read More

The COVID pandemic continues to impact Minnesota's criminal justice system. Sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes in ways that may surprise you. As usual, it's up to defense attorneys to make sure their clients don't get thrown under the COVID bus. Read More

A "strict liability" crime is one where it doesn't matter what you intended to do -- if the government can prove you did it, you're guilty. It's the type of crime where the strength of the State's evidence is of the utmost importance; we shouldn't be convicting people of strict liability crimes on substandard evidence. Substandard scientific evidence has always been the foe in the scientific war that's raged in Court for decades. Read More

For the first time in over a decade, Minnesota is seeing defense attorneys fight with the State of Minnesota over access to the source code that governs almost every aspect of our fleet of breath test instruments. We're already getting license revocations thrown out of court -- here's how (and why). Read More

There has been a certain amount of “scope creep” across years of efforts to be "tough on crime." At what point are we working too hard to undermine our constitutional right to due process, a fair trial, and being innocent until proven guilty? Read More

Good scientific practices can keep us safe, and insure the guilty are punished according to the law. Junk science, however, is what unjustly punishes the innocent and undermines our faith in the judicial system. Today, we're writing about junk science. Read More

Here in Minnesota, like the rest of the world, everyone is struggling to find the new “normal” in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Bars are opening (and closing), we’re not getting as many haircuts as we used to, and almost everyone is sporting a trendy face mask when they’re out in public. But in the rush to find a new normal, some dangerous steps are being taken. Read More

Today, the Minnesota Supreme Court determined that law enforcement cannot casually search a hotel registry to determine who is currently staying at the hotel. In a "celebrate Minnesota's freedoms" type of scenario, the Court also relied entirely on the protections in the Minnesota Constitution -- not the federal Fourth Amendment. Read More

It's how humans are wired -- we want to be able to answer every question. "Why" is the first question we learn to ask as a small (sometimes annoying) child, and that question carries on throughout our lives. But sometimes, in our rush to come up with answers, we start asking the wrong questions. Read More

The governor and the legislature have demonstrated exemplary leadership during the Covid-19 crisis. Shouldn’t we expect the same from our judicial branch, too? Read More

We've gotten the same question from multiple friends and family members -- "what type of paperwork do I need to travel around during the effective period of Governor Walz' 'Stay At Home' Order?" Our answer is always the same . . . Read More

We ended part 2 of this 4 part blog series with the question: “We’ve been down this road before and we learned from it. Right?” The answer is, Yes! . . . but apparently, it didn't take long for some of us to forget . . . Read More

Part 2 of our 4 part blog series exploring the software (source code) that controls every aspect of Minnesota's breath testing machine -- the DataMaster DMT. Read More