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Tuesday, April 2, 2013
By Michael Nichols
Categories: Michael J. Nichols
Did you know that 90 new troopers graduated from recruit school on March 30th in Lansing and they are given expensive and important training that most judges are not requiring them to use? “I am often shocked at the level of subjectivity used by officers when investigating a drunk driving case on the roadside,” says Michigan drunk driving attorney Mike Nichols. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a conservative and successful business entrepreneur before he was elected - decided to spend precious state tax dollars on a public safety initiative. The initiative includes spending money to train and hire new recruits to patrol Michigan’s streets and highways as Michigan State Police Troopers. An article on the initiative and the latest recruit school graduation by reporter Tim Martin of MLive is here:
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/03/90_new_michigan_state_police_t.html
However, the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), which is cited in the article, mandated that every police officer receive training on the standardized field sobriety tests (SFSTs) promulgated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). You can find information about MCOLES and its training requirements here:
http://www.michigan.gov/mcoles/0,4607,7-229-41624---,00.html
Even though MCOLES requires officers to receive training on the NHTSA SFSTs, judges are not requiring officers to follow the NHTSA standards when investigating a drunk driving case. Nichols says “I think courts are letting officers take the easy way out and when they do that, they are doing a disservice to the public and to jurors. The reason is that they are letting prosecutors and police officers pick and choose behaviors or statements by a citizen suspected of drunk driving as evidence of impairment without pointing out the standardized tests and clues from those tests and what they really mean. It gives the officers’ testimony a flair of being ‘forensic evidence’ based on the officer’s training and experience when it is nothing more than picking and choosing what the decision-maker in the case should hear.”
Mike Nichols will be speaking around the country throughout the rest of 2013 about forensic evidence issues, chemical testing and drugged driving. On April 4th, Nichols will address the Colorado DUI Attorneys Association about the misuse of lab reports claiming the presence of marijuana in human blood. Colorado is one of 2 states that legalized marijuana in 2012. The legislature there is considering new laws to create presumptions of illegal marijuana levels in blood while driving. Nichols will also speak at a conference in Virginia on April 13th about investigating forensic labs and bogus accreditation. He says “when I speak, I am often speaking to competitors who may get hired on a case for which I am not hired. Nonetheless, we have to raise the level of understanding to educate judges and juries so that we can make our criminal justice system better. The government has monopolized forensic evidence for far too long.”
Nichols is the author of the OWI practice book by West Publishing for Michigan lawyers and co-authored the chapter “DUI Mathematics” in “Understanding DUI Evidence” by West. He is an adjunct professor of DUI Law and Practice and Forensic Evidence at Thomas M. Cooley in Lansing, the Michigan Delegate to the National College for DUI Defense, of which he is a sustaining member. He is a founder and currently Secretary of the Michigan Association of OWI Attorneys (MIAOWA). He lives in East Lansing with his wife and law partner Wendy Schiller-Nichols and his children Lauren, Christian and Morgan. He is an avid Michigan State University sports fan and often extends professional courtesies to members of the MSU community.
For the attorney who is a leader in drunk driving and drugged driving defense, call Mike Nichols at 517.432.9000 or e-mail him at mnichols@nicholslaw.net