Our nation’s birthday is just a few weeks away. Traditionally an occasion for friends and family to gather, it is also one of the busiest for law enforcement to stop and arrest suspected impaired drivers. Officials point out that the holiday is one of the deadliest for impaired driving and set up sobriety checkpoints, DUI saturation patrols, and add more staff to generally curb impaired driving.
Colorado is tough on Impaired driving
According to a Colorado Division of Criminal Justice report from earlier this year, the state takes impaired driving very seriously. Proof of this includes the final numbers from 2019:
- Colorado prosecutors filed 26,165 cases involving at least one DUI charge.
- The conviction rate was 88%.
- The most common convictions were high blood alcohol concentration (BAC) results (96%), high Delta 9-THC results (92%), and polydrug results (92%).
- The top 5 counties for DUI filings were El Paso (3,616), Adams (2,817), Larimer (2,344), Jefferson (2,306), Denver (1,817) and Arapahoe (1,763).
12% is noteworthy
Amidst all these numbers is that 12% of the drivers were not convicted after getting pulled over. Many assume guilt is a foregone conclusion once the officer initiates the stop. Still, there are instances where they make technical mistakes, do not follow legal protocols or provide tainted evidence.
Knowledgeable criminal law attorneys greatly help protect the rights of those charged by recognizing the prosecution’s errors or inadmissible evidence. Those arrested in the coming days can remember this before giving up and just accepting the law enforcement’s case.