An Ohio man was stopped for suspicion of DUI the other day, and he tried a unique way to show the officers that he was not impaired. 27-year-old Tanner Watson was pulled over in Broadview Heights for speeding, but officers suspected a possible OVI (Ohio’s version of DUI). He admitted a having a few beers, but to show that he wasn’t drunk, he did a backflip for the officers on the side of the road. Not only that, he landed it.
Based on his performance on the other exercises, officers still felt that he was impaired and arrested him. But, he’s got an argument to the jury that his acrobatics would show that he’s not impaired. There is some power to the argument that if he can pull off such a physical feat, that he was not impaired, as most of the jurors would not be able to do a flip!
A friend of mine at the prosecutor’s office was working a DUI case many years ago, and wanted to show me the video. He thought he had a great case because the Defendant started dancing during the field sobriety exercises. Not just any dancing, she was a ballet dance, and started going through positions and performed some impressive moves. I told him that the case may not be as strong as he thought, and the jury ended up acquitting her. It can be hard to show that someone’s normal faculties are impaired, as required by the law, when they can perform impressive athletic skills.
I said it was a unique way to avoid a DUI, but a little searching shows that he is not the only person to do a backflip to try to prove his sobriety, here’s another:
There have been quite a few ways people have tried to avoid DUIs, check out this parkour guy, backflips are among the more impressive.
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