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New Jersey Drunken Driving Investigative Stop

By Lependorf & Silverstein

On December 22, 2008, The New Jersey Supreme Court reversed two lower court decisions that relate to Clifton, NJ police officers who stopped a driver on suspicion of driving while intoxicated in New Jersey based solely on a tip the officers received from the drunk driver?s seventeen year old daughter. The officers were dispatched to a Clifton home to investigate a domestic disturbance between a father and his seventeen year old daughter. Before the officers arrived they received word that the daughter had called the dispatcher to advise that her father had left the home in his black Oldsmobile and that the father, in his daughter?s opinion, was ?drunk.? The Law Division and Appellate Division Courts reasoned that a seventeen year old did not have the capacity to distinguish between drunk and sober, and these Courts dismissed the DUI charge finding the officers did not have a ?reasonable suspicion? to stop the car...continue to full post

Full post as published by New Jersey Criminal Defense Blog on December 31, 2008 (boomark / email).