Interoffice Memo

You are a paralegal at a law firm representing the criminal defendant in the DUI in the aforementioned criminal scenario. The senior partner at your firm has asked you whether or not our client has a winning argument against the DUI charges. He tells you that he thinks perhaps the stop was bad--that the officer might not have had probable cause to stop our client. The reason for the stop was that the client's car didn't have the headlights on at 5 P.M. two weeks ago (from today's date). In addition, after the car was stopped, the police officer kept our client at the scene for approximately 25 minutes before he administered field sobriety tests. He did not smell alcohol at the initial stop but claimed that our client kept looking back at him during those 25 minutes and appeared agitated which gave him the proximate cause for the sobriety tests. Before he administered those tests, he asked our client if he'd been drinking and our client declined to answer.

Here is the Indiana Code on headlights: I.C. 9-21-7-2.

Here are a few cases that may assist you in your defense of our client: Wilson v. State, 847 N.E.2d 1064, State v. Gray, 997 N.E.2d 1147 and State v. Washington, 898 N.E.2d, 1200.

Your job is to read the statute and the cases and determine what our client's best legal argument against the charge is. You may research on your own and include any other cases that you like, but you are not required to. Discuss the cases and the statute, and give the best guidance to the attorney as you are able to.