This paper examines the Philosophy of Human Subjectivity in a DUI Arrest from the perspective of the Bias of “Less Safe”

The search for the objective truth is the supreme rule in the sphere of criminal law. We depend on DNA, video evidence and scientific measurements to make sure the awesome power of the state is used fairly and accurately. But in the state of Georgia, a large number of impaired driving arrests will completely avoid this requirement for scientific certainty. If a person is arrested, charged and convicted of drunk driving under the DUI Less Safe law, they are never required to provide a chemical test result. We have to face a very uncomfortable question related to this legal standard: the subjective nature of human beings is an inevitable problem in the criminal justice system, which is both biased and unreliable.

Under Georgia law, it is possible to make a driver less safe to drive entirely on the basis of the arresting officer’s observations and opinions. This is to say that a citizen does not have to be tested with a breathalyzer or blood test for the police in Atlanta to conclude that he has broken the law. They have to make a subjective decision based on what they see, hear and perform on field sobriety tests, that the driver is impaired. Philosophically speaking, it gives one person an inordinate amount of power, and it’s the power of one individual who is as prone to mistakes, prejudices, and emotions as anyone else.

The basic issue with the Less Safe standard is that it requires the police officer to be a neutral, fallible recording device. In fact, policing is a human activity which is subjective in nature. An officer pulls a driver over at two in the morning on the shoulder of Interstate 85.It’s a hectic place when an officer pulls a driver over at 2 a.m. on the shoulder of Interstate 85. Loud, not well lit and very stressful for all parties involved. Here, the officer may need to search for signs of intoxication. They watch the driver’s eyes, they listen to what the driver says, and they watch the coordination of the driver’s hands, feet and legs.

Yet, human perception is a very poor one. These physical indications are strongly influenced by confirmation bias. When the officer already has a suspicion that the driver has been drinking, he or she is psychologically wired to see these things as evidence of intoxication.The officer is already suspicious the driver has been drinking, so he or she will see these things as proof of intoxication. Someone who is just really tired after being on duty for fourteen hours, is allergic to a specific food or suffers from anxiety or is being interrogated by armed law enforcement will manifest the identical physical signs and symptoms of being intoxicated by liquor.

This philosophical problem is complicated by the field sobriety tests that are used to substantiate a Less Safe arrest. These exercises are performed while walking heel to toe or standing on one foot; they are scientifically proven exercises to look at in court. However, they are given and scored by the same officer who made the traffic stop. The grading is strictly based on the personal opinion of the examiner. If a driver moves slightly in the wind, or rest his arms for balance, the officer will determine if that movement is a failure. No machine checks the result; it’s the officer’s interpretation of the driver’s physical limitations.

The reason why it’s so important to hire an advocate with a background in the psychology of policing to help defend against these specific charges is that they are based on subjective human observation. The defense cannot allow the officer’s story to be a fact without the intervention of an effective Atlanta DUI Lawyer. The defense must logically and practically break down the officer’s observations and bring out the biases, assumptions and environmental factors that led to the arrest.

From this particular viewpoint of defense, James Yeargan offers an inestimable perspective. He is a former prosecutor and former trainer of police officers in the administration of field sobriety testing, and that experience brings light to the enormous problems with the Less Safe standard. He knows exactly how officers are trained to build a case on subjective clues and more importantly, he knows when an officer’s personal bias has taken the place of objective reality. His experience enables him to closely scrutinize the arresting officer’s conduct and explain to a jury how a person can be innocent and yet be misinterpreted as being impaired during a traffic stop.

Interposing an Affirmation of Challenge to a Less Safe charge is a fundamental attack on the monopoly of the state on the truth. If the prosecution depends upon the subjective opinion of a single officer, and not hard scientific evidence, the defense must bring reasonable doubt by emphasizing the limitations of the human sensorial organs. An experienced Atlanta DUI Lawyer will use body camera footage to more than simply look at what the driver did, they will also be looking at what the officer did, his expectations and following proper procedure.

So the philosophy of justice requires that a citizen be deprived of his or her freedom and permanently labeled a criminal simply because another person has formed a hasty and prejudicial judgment about him or her. So long as Georgia prosecutes drivers aggressively and vigorously under the subjective Less Safe standard, the ethical obligation of the defense is to prevent human error, cognitive bias or roadside anxiety from becoming conclusive evidence of guilt.