DWI Charges in Little Falls Dismissed after Successful Motions by Travis Tormey
Local DUI Defense Lawyers in the Little Falls Municipal Court
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Travis J. Tormey recently represented a client who had been charged with Driving While Intoxicated (DWI) in Little Falls, New Jersey. Since the client allegedly registered a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .09 percent, which is slightly above the NJ legal limit of .08 percent BAC, he was charged with drunk driving. Although this was the client’s first DWI offense, he still faced severe penalties that included suspension of his driver’s license for three months, a $750 fine, mandatory attendance at alcohol education classes hosted by the Intoxicated Driver Resource Center (IDRC), and a possible sentence of up to 30 days in the local county jail.
The facts of the case were as follows: the client was found by police standing outside his car, which had been stopped along the train tracks in Little Falls, NJ. The vehicle was stuck on the railroad tracks, requiring the local police to call a tow truck so that the car could be removed from the tracks. The client was subsequently charged with a first offense DWI.
When the client later appeared in Little Falls Municipal Court, located in Passaic County NJ, to address the DWI charges, the State had multiple issues of proof. For example, the prosecutor was not able to establish that Little Falls police had administered the Alcotest breath test on the client within a reasonable time after he operated his motor vehicle. Since police did not actually see the client sitting in his vehicle at any point, they could not definitively say when he had driven his car or how long it had been stuck on the train tracks in Little Fall, NJ. Moreover, another issue for the prosecutor was that they could not prove DWI charges for a person who had been found behind the wheel of an inoperable motor vehicle. The car in this case was deemed “inoperable” because it was stuck on the railroad tracks, which meant that it was not possible for the client to drive it.
Travis Tormey and the experienced DUI defense lawyers at our firm raised all of these issues when filing a motion to dismiss the DWI case based on a lack of operation of the motor vehicle. Mr. Tormey also filed a motion to suppress the breath test reading in the case. The municipal court judge granted both of these motions, leading to the dismissal of the DWI charges.
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The client ultimately pleaded guilty to a minor traffic offense of careless driving, resulting in a 30-day license suspension. This was a great result for the client and a major success for the firm.