As it relates to DUI defense, a lesson to be learned here is that video recording is not just a tool for the client, but for the police as well. McNabb shouldn’t have said anything at all, but instead tried to acknowledge and minimize the signs of what police suggested they believed to be signs of intoxication by selecting, what I presume, what he believed to be an innocuous explanation of cold medicine. Moreover, in the context of a DUI investigation, one should never voluntarily offer up that you just left a sports bar, as McNabb did.
Former NFL quarterback Donovan McNabb was arrested under suspicion of DUI on Tuesday. It is his second arrest for DUI in 18 months. His first DUI arrest resulted in a guilty plea wherein served a day in jail. He also was ordered to pay a fine of nearly $1,500 and enter an outpatient treatment program in Scottsdale.
On July 14, 2015 police in the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert said lab tests show McNabb’s blood alcohol level was 0.17. The legal limit in Arizona is 0.08, and anything 0.15 or higher qualifies as extreme DUI. McNabb’s vehicle rear-ended a vehicle driven by the wife of a Gila River tribal police officer. A responding officer said McNabb’s eyes were “very bloodshot and his speech was slurred,” according to the arrest report.
In police video of the late-night arrest on June 28, McNabb tells an officer he had just left a sports bar and was driving home. He goes on to say he hasn’t been drinking and that he’s sick. “Well, first of all, I got a cold. So I’ve been on cough medicine,” McNabb says.
He had been serving as a commentator for Fox Sports but was suspended indefinitely from the TV network after the arrest.
