Does a lack of a cruiser video help a Virginia DWI defense?

In every Virginia DWI case that I handle, I seek out the video if there is any. But what happens if there isn’t a video from the cruiser? Does that help our defense?

Video Transcription

Hello, my name is Andrew Flusche. I’m a Virginia traffic and misdemeanor attorney. One of the things that a lot of my DUI clients ask me about is: What does it mean for the case if there is no video from the cruiser?

One of the things that I do in every DUI case is seek any possible video to see what it actually shows. I love the video because it’s the neutral observer. You know, it’s not seeing the situation behind the lens of a person’s eye where a person may be misremembering or maybe didn’t see something. The video sees everything in its lens anyway. So the video can be very helpful and I’ve talked about that a lot before on videos and articles on our web site. But what does that mean for the case if there is no video. Does that mean you walk free? Unfortunately, no.

Unfortunately, the lack of video is not harmful to the Commonwealth’s case. It really hurts us more than anything. It makes it where we don’t have that neutral observer to be able to verify the officer’s story or sometimes contradict the story. Sometimes it does provide an angle for us to hook into for a defense or at least discover additional information that maybe the officer didn’t mention when we talk to him. Unfortunately, a lack of video doesn’t help us and in fact it sometimes kind of hurts us a little.

But usually it’s honestly not that big of a deal when there’s no video. We just have to look a little more closely at the officer’s report to see if there’s any close questions and talk to the officer a little more about those issues and we go from there so unfortunately a lack of a video is not going to save the day on a Virginia DUI or DWI.