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?Slurred Speech?

By Lawrence Taylor

As with the odor of alcohol on the breath, few police reports will fail to include an observation by the arresting officer that the arrestee exhibited “slurred speech”. (See my earlier post, “Alcohol on the Breath: Evidence of DUI?”).  The officer fully expects to hear slurred speech in a person he suspects is intoxicated, particularly after smelling alcohol on the breath, and it is a psychological fact that we tend to “hear” what we expect to hear. And hearing it supplies the officer with corroboration of his suspicions. Even assuming the honesty of the officer that the defendant’s speech was slurred, there is little evidence that this is symptomatic of intoxication. Impairment of speech is, for example, a common — and sober — reaction to the stress, fear and nervousness that a police investigation would be expected to engender...continue to full post

Full post as published by DUI Blog on August 06, 2008 (boomark / email).