What Are DUI Laws In Tennessee? What Is The BAC Level In Tennessee?

The legal blood alcohol concentration level in Tennessee is 0.08. It is .04 for a driver who has a commercial driver’s license (CDL) There is a different blood alcohol concentration for minors.

What Are The Penalties For A First DUI And A Second DUI Conviction In Tennessee?

A first DUI carries a 48-hour minimum jail sentence. The actual sentence is 364 days, but typically it will be suspended in place of probation. But there is a mandatory 48 hours in jail and a mandatory fine. The mandatory fine is a minimum of $350, and a maximum of $1,500. A first offender will lose his/her driver’s license for one year. If the blood alcohol concentration is over 0.2 for a first offense, there is a mandatory 7 days in jail.

A second DUI conviction carries a 364-day jail sentence, but most of the sentence will typically be suspended in place of probation. For a second DUI conviction, there is a mandatory 45 days in jail. The fine is a minimum of $600, a maximum of $3,500 and an offender is going to They can apply for a restricted license or an ignition interlock. The restricted licenses limit the places you are allowed to travel, and the ignition interlock requires you to blow into the ignition interlock periodically to start your car while you’re driving. There is a monthly cost for the ignition interlock

If there is a child in the car at the time of the DUI, it’s considered an aggravated DUI.

Implied consent is generally handled in the court with the DUI but it’s technically a civil offense and it is handled by the Department of Motor Vehicles. When you get a driver’s license, you impliedly consent to any blood-alcohol tests that the law enforcement officer may request. That can either be to blow into a breathalyzer or it could be a blood test if the officer has reasonable suspicion that you’re driving under the influence of a prescribed or illicit drug. If you refuse to take those tests, you violated implied consent and the Department of Motor Vehicles will take your driver’s license for a year. You could ultimately beat your DUI charge but still be found liable for violating the law of implied consent and still lose your license.

What Are DUI Field Sobriety Tests? Do I Have To Do Them?

The most common field sobriety tests are set out in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration manual. An officer will have either a painted line on the ground or just an imaginary line and ask that you stand on the line heel to toe with your hands down at your side while he gives you instructions for the walk and turns.

All of the field sobriety exercises are used to determine balance, your ability to understand instructions and execute those instructions while displaying balance. A law enforcement officer cannot ask someone to get in their car and drive down the road to see how they drive, to see whether or not they’re driving in an impaired fashion. They substitute these field sobriety exercises that have multiple parts to them all happening at the same time to see if your mental faculties are intact as well as your physical faculties.

The walk and turn test requires someone to stand in a line, heel to toe with the heel of one the toe of the other foot in a line and their hands down by their sides. That’s a difficult thing to do even stone-cold sober.

Another common field sobriety exercise is the one-leg stand where an officer will ask you to stand on one leg and with the other one straight up in front of you. People who are under the influence of nervous system depressants will have an unusual sense of time. So the officer asks that person to count to 30 in their head and he will count 30 on his watch to see if they can approximate 30 seconds in their head. They’re testing to see whether or not you might be under the influence of a nervous system depressant such as an opiate or alcohol.

One test that is very common in the state of Tennessee is called horizontal gaze nystagmus or HGN. A person under the influence of a central nervous system depressant will have involuntary fluttering of their eye when the eye is looking all the way to the left or right. An officer will ask a driver to watch a pen or light as he moves it back and forth in front of the person to see if the person’s eye flutters. If a person is under the influence of a central nervous system depressant, their eye will flutter. Horizontal gaze nystagmus is usually not admissible in Tennessee at a trial but officers do it all the time anyway.

What Happens If I Refuse To Take A Breathalyzer Test In Tennessee?

You could be liable for the violation of implied consent and lose your license for a year regardless of what happens with a criminal DUI charge.

I Am Going To Plead Guilty To DUI In Tennessee. Do I Still Need To Hire A DUI Lawyer?

Most courts in this area will apply the minimum penalty that’s provided by statute. The times that you would need an attorney for DUI is if you think that maybe you shouldn’t have been pulled over. If the officer pulled you over inappropriately, if you had a DUI blood alcohol concentration higher than 0.2, if you had a child in the car, if you think that you really didn’t do it, that you were not under the influence of anything, then you would need an attorney. But if you’re pretty convinced that you did it and you’re just going to plead guilty, you’d probably get the minimum penalty regardless of whether you had an attorney or not.

For more information on BAC Level In DUI Cases In The State Of TN, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (423) 262-8964 today.