Hello everyone. I’m Deandra Grant, and this is the Ask Deandra video series, where we answer the most commonly asked questions about DWI on the internet. This corresponds with my Ask Deandra blog series, and the link to today’s blog is down in the description for this video.
The question today is: do I have to take field sobriety tests if I’m pulled over for DWI?
The easy answer is no. There’s no law that requires you to take field sobriety tests, to perform little roadside exercises for the police officer who is suspecting you of DWI. Unlike breath or blood tests, where you’re arrested and they ask you for a breath or blood test and there are driver’s license implications depending on whether you say yes or no, it doesn’t work that way with field sobriety tests.
Let’s first talk about what they are. There are three standardized field sobriety tests. There is the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, the walk and turn test, and the one leg stand test.
I’m just going to give you a general assessment of my thoughts after 30-plus years of handling DWI cases in Texas. If a police officer gets you out of the car and tells you they want to check your eyes, they are already heading towards arresting you for DWI. They just are. Whether you’re intoxicated or not intoxicated, they’ve already made that decision, because they are asking you to do tests to bolster the opinion they already have. Now, a police officer would tell you that’s not true: “I investigate people all the time and let them go.” I don’t believe that. I just don’t believe that. As soon as they start looking at your eyes, they’ve already decided to arrest you. So you might want to keep that in the back of your head.
But if you were to engage in field sobriety tests, they would have you do the horizontal gaze nystagmus, which is where they’re checking for involuntary jerking of your eyes at particular angles. I think the horizontal gaze nystagmus test is voodoo and completely ridiculous and should never be admitted as evidence in a court of law, but it is. One of the biggest issues I see is, probably 95% of the time, the police officers administer the test wrong. So even if it were super valid and scientifically reliable, they don’t do it right. So therein lies that problem.
Walk and turn is very much a balance-oriented test. They have you basically walking a line like a tightrope walker. They give you a whole bunch of very specific instructions very quickly, and if you’ve never done it before, you’re probably going to be like, “Wait, what? You want me to do what?” And anything that you do or say, even if you do it well, there’s going to be some explanation by the officer of why it was a sign of intoxication.
The one leg stand is holding your foot up in the air for 30 seconds. Most people can’t do that. If you were ever, for some reason, to take a field sobriety testing training course, you would see everyone in there trying to learn how to do these tests over the course of two or three days, and people are not able to keep their foot up. Police officers learn a little trick where they slightly bend their knee, and you can hold your foot out really straight and it’ll more likely stay up. But most average citizens don’t know how to do that.
So, do you have to take the field sobriety tests? No. What if you say no? Well, if you say no, as I told you, in my personal opinion, they’ve already decided to arrest you. They smell alcohol, or you’ve made some admissions to them that you’re coming from somewhere where you were drinking alcohol, or possibly taking medications, or they smell marijuana and they’ve decided that you’re high. They’re already arresting you. Doing the field sobriety tests just gives them evidence to hang their hat on, so to speak. If you don’t do it, they’re going to arrest you for being non-cooperative and say, “Well, you didn’t prove to me that you weren’t intoxicated, so I’m going to go ahead and arrest you.” So you just do need to be aware of that. It’s sort of a judgment call. But is there a specific penalty for not taking them? No.
If you want to know more about field sobriety testing, go ahead and read the blog that corresponds with this video. Hope you found this useful.
