By Dan Noll on September 12th, 2016 in
When an individual has marijuana in their system, they can be charged with driving under the influence of drugs in the state of Illinois. Depending on exactly what happened, that can be a misdemeanor offense or a felony offense. Marijuana is a strict liability offense when it is in your system for purposes of driving under the influence of drugs. What I mean by strict liability is that if there is any amount of cannabis or any other drug for that matter in your blood or urine, you can be convicted of driving under the influence of drugs.
What a individual needs to know about that is, number 1, they have a right to refuse giving a blood or urine sample, and the officer could be required to get a warrant to prove that the cannabis or other drug is in their system. Sometimes, the judge is based upon the time of day or just the officer’s laziness, will not ask to get a warrant, and that can be very beneficial in terms of defending a DUI case. However, if cannabis is found in your system, if you did give that blood or urine sample, there are a number of other ways to challenge the actual DUI itself, including whether the officer had probable cause to pull your vehicle over, whether he had probable cause to ask for the blood and urine sample, and those are items that relate to the field sobriety test, which you can read about on other pages of our website, and there may be some additional videos on those.
If you are arrested for a misdemeanor or felony DUI offense in Springfield, Illinois, or anywhere in the surrounding areas, whether there was cannabis or any other intoxicating compound, please feel free to give our office a call. We’d be happy to sit down with you and discuss your options.