Our Supreme Court Doesn’t Care about Field Sobriety Tests – Maybe

When you are pulled over for a DUI in Tennessee, the police officer may ask you to perform a field sobriety test. They’re used to test coordination, mostly, so there’s a lot of “touch your nose with alternating fingers while you count to ten” types of tests to see whether or not you’re too impaired to drive (or impaired at all). They’re a standard part of any DUI stop, in Tennessee or in almost any other state in the US.

Well, they were. Things might be changing now.

In 2009, a man named David Dwayne Bell was pulled over on a suspicion of DUI and asked to perform six field sobriety tests. He passed them all. But the cops said Bell smelled like alcohol AND admitted that he had been drinking, so he was arrested. However, three lower courts found that based on Bell’s performance in the roadside tests, the cops had no cause to arrest him. The Tennessee State Supreme Court felt differently, and let the charges stand. Thus, Mr. Bell – despite his best efforts – still has the DUI on his record.

What this means for the future of field tests

In the end, smelling like alcohol and admitting to drinking is still enough to get yourself arrested for a DUI in Tennessee. But the fact that three courts said that passing the field sobriety tests was enough to let Bell go may have long-term implications. Law enforcement officials use those tests as one of many ways to check a driver’s potential impairment. If they think you’ve been drinking, they don’t have to do a sobriety test at all; they can just ask that you take a breath test and call it a day. And as a driver, you don’t have to do the field sobriety test or take a breath test (though you face having your license suspended anyway).

All of this begs the question, then, of what point it is even administering a field sobriety test if passing them doesn’t indicate sobriety. If the tests are fundamentally flawed, we could also see a lot of convicted drivers pushing to have their records expunged because a field sobriety test is what “got” them in the first place.

Looks like our men and women in uniform are going to have to come up with a new plan; this one clearly isn’t working anymore.