Jessica Towne is a respected attorney and former Gwinnett County prosecutor.  She is the author of "How to Choose a Georgia DUI Lawyer," and the popular blog of the same name  found on the clarktowne.com website.   Over her twenty-year legal career, she has given dozens of lectures on constitutional law, trial practice, and the admissibility of scientific evidence in court.  She is a member of many legal societies, and as served as President of both the Gwinnett County Bar Association and the Criminal Defense Section of Gwinnett County Bar Association, and as the Vice President of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Ms. Towne's DUI courtroom expertise was firmly established in 1999, when she and her partner, David Clark, won Love v. State, which struck down Georgia's DUI-marijuana law as unconstitutional.  That same year, they kept laser speeding guns from being used in Georgia.  (The short-lived victory was hastily undone by the Georgia Legislature, which feared loss of revenue and passed a law stating that any police anywhere can use any laser gun.) Since then, Ms. Towne has won numerous key cases, while continuing to bring justice to her clients in the areas of DUI, traffic law, and similar offenses .  Her law practice, Clark & Towne PC, is located in Lawrenceville, just outside Atlanta, GA.

Here is an excerpt from David Clark's book "101 Ways to Beat a Marijuana Charge in Georgia." You can get your copy here.

See our other blogs about this book:

• "101 Ways to Beat a Marijuana Charge in Georgia"
• Dave Clark's Interview
• Never Consent to Any Search
• All About Drug Dogs

People ask me all the time, "Do I have to give the police my name and date of birth?"

The answer is No, unless they have some facts to justify stopping you for questioning. The U.S. Supreme Court said, in Brown v Texas, "In the absence of any basis for suspecting [you] of misconduct, the balance between the public interest and [your] right to personal security and privacy tilts in favor of freedom from police interference. . . .[E]ven assuming that [a legitimate law enforcement] purpose is served to some degree by stopping and demanding identification from [you] without any specific basis for believing [you are] involved in criminal activity, the guarantees of the Fourth Amendment do not allow it. When such a stop is not based on objective criteria, the risk of arbitrary and abusive police practices exceeds tolerable limits."

The Brown rule was adopted in Georgia in one of my first appellate cases, Holt v State: "Where circumstances do not provide an officer with articulable suspicion (less than probable cause, but greater than mere caprice) that the law has been or is about to be violated, the officer's act of detaining and questioning an individual is nothing more than a police-citizen encounter outside the scope of the officer's ‘official' police duties." The Court ruled that the cop's inquiry into Mr. Holt's name and date of birth was not based upon articulable facts indicating that he had engaged in, was engaging in, or was about to engage in criminal activity.
In Georgia, if the cop has no reasonable articulable suspicion that you are breaking the law, he cannot lawfully ask for your name. Note: be polite, and don't lie. None of the cops I know understand this rule, and it is definitely against the law to give a false name and/o DOB to a cop. If you're driving, you must give him your license.

If you are loitering, you will be arrested for not giving your name, as they are allowed to presume a bad purpose for the loitering. Always offer to move along or leave the area if the cops ask you your name and you're holding weed. That way they can't say you're loitering. Or give him your name and DOB and say nothing more. You are not loitering if you are a passenger in a car, or visiting a friend's house, or in a place where normal people normally hang out. You have to be in a place where normal law-abiding people aren't usually hanging out. Plus your being there has to give rise to a legitimate public safety concern (alarm). Otherwise, the cops are interfering with your lawful right to travel /peaceably assemble and violating your Fourth Amendment rights.

Bottom line - you are probably going to be arrested in Georgia if you refuse to identify yourself upon command. Under the Constitution, you technically don't have to provide your name, ID, or date of birth to a police officer. He can ask, but he can't require an answer. If you have a run in with the law and the only reason you were arrested was for failing to provide ID upon command, and they searched you incident to arrest and found weed, your lawyer can win that case.

Unfortunately, you probably can't know if and when you're over the legal limit. It is not illegal to drive after drinking alcohol. In Georgia, it's illegal to drive when your blood alcohol content (BAC) is over 0.08 grams, OR if you're incapable of driving safely due to alcohol consumed before driving (whew!). The MADD folks want you to make a bright-line choice: if you're going to be driving, don't drink anything at all that has alcohol in it, OR if you know you're going to be drinking, do not drive for 24 hours. If you're a social drinker, that choice may be unrealistic.

There are "products" out there that you can buy to help you gauge your BAC, but they may give you a false sense of security. You can go here to calculate what someone of your body weight can safely drink and be under the legal limit. But BAC calculations may not take into account other factors: your metabolism rate, whether you've eaten recently and what you've eaten, what medications you take on a regular basis and what you took that day, and stress situations. Of course, it is equally illegal to drive (1) if you're taking prescription medication that affects your driving ability, (2) if you're under the influence of toxic vapors (glue sniffers, no driving!), (3) if the combination of alcohol and drugs impairs you or (4) if you've taken any illegal drug, other than marijuana, whether or not you're "high."

DUI is a subjective "crime." No one thinks that drugged or drunk driving is a joke; driving under the influence is much different than drunk driving, and that's why you probably can't ever tell if you're over the legal limit before you start driving home. The best way to avoid a DUI is to not drive unless you know how the alcohol is affecting you, you're very certain of how much you've had to drink over a certain length of time. If you've lost track of either, let someone have your keys.

At Clark & Towne, we do more than just represent people charged with DUI.  Many of our cases involve people involved in serious traffic offenses, shop lifting, or drug charges. Many of our clients truly are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  No matter what the case, we work hard with our clients to bring about the best possible outcomes.  And we love to get feedback.  Here are a couple of recent thank yous Jessica Towne received from her clients:

"Thank you so much for your help Jessica.   I just wanted to let you know about my case in Lilburn yesterday.    I am excited about the outcome.  Thank you for taking the time to help me."   SJ

"Congratulations on a job well done! You are marvelous. As usual you have worked your magic and come up a winner. H and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping us. "   DW