The Constitution should apply to all equally. A person accused of murder has the exact same rights as someone accused of writing a bad check. This is the way it is supposed to work, but in the real world, it doesn’t. In fact, the Utah Courts and the Utah legislature have continuously found ways to limit the rights of the citizens accused of DUI in Utah. Here is the reality:
- If you are arrested for DUI, the officer will immediately seize your license. No judge, no jury, and you are presumed guilty before anyone hears the facts of your case.
- You can contest your Drivers License Suspension, and if you win the administrative hearing, you can still lose it in the Criminal Proceedings. Double jeopardy does not apply.
- The officer will not read you Miranda warnings until after he has done his investigation, and he may never read them even after you are arrested.
- You do not have a right to an attorney before you give evidence against yourself. In fact, in Utah, you have no right to an attorney when you are deciding to take a chemical test.
- Normally, if you remain silent, the jury cannot hear evidence of you exercising your right to remain silent. However, if you refuse a chemical test, there is a Utah statute that specifically allows the evidence of you refusing to be presented to the jury.
- Officers are required to have a reasonable suspicion that you have committed a crime in order to pull you over. However, in a DUI check point, officers can pull you over for no reason and check to see if you have been drinking.
- Normally, if the government destroys evidence, the evidence cannot be used against. In a Utah DUI situation, you have no right to retest the chemical evidence against you.
- In Utah, you can be convicted of a DUI even though when you were driving you were below a .08 brac/bac, but yet when you were tested you were above a .08.
The reality is there are DUI exceptions to the constitution. There is no other crime in Utah with so many exceptions to the out citizens constitutional rights.
