A Brevard County DUI arrest netted a local assistant principal who was originally pulled over for a speeding ticket. According to a story on the website of Melbourne TV station WFTV, Margaret Spinazzola was arrested on Friday and charged with driving under the influence.
The incident occurred before 1:00 a.m. on Dairy Road. According to reports the Brevard County assistant principal was driving upwards of 60 MPH in a 40 MPH zone. Her vehicle was swerving and police claim they could tell things were not right with Spinazzola the moment they approached her car. The officers reported seeing standard signs of impairment like slurred speech and eyes that were red. They also say that there was a strong smell of alcohol which led to her Florida DUI arrest.

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If you are planning on breaking any Florida traffic laws especially the ones surrounding drunk driving in Florida, the Florida Highway Patrol will be looking for you this Labor Day weekend. The FHP is planning on saturating Florida roads and highways this weekend in hopes of keeping drivers all over the state of Florida safe as they travel this holiday weekend. Combine Labor Day with two home football games in Tallahassee and Gainesville and there is the potential for a busy three-day weekend on Florida highways.
The FHP is joining with what the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel is thousands of other law enforcement agencies to beef up patrols through Monday. According to the FHP they issued a Florida traffic citation approximately 16,000 times last Labor Day weekend and on top of that there were 136 arrests of drunk drivers or impaired drivers. Last year there were a reported 23 traffic fatalities over the holiday weekend which was a third less than the amount in 2008.

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James Hasley, Sr., a 54-year old Manatee County resident, was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of an accident last week. According to the Florida Highway Patrol a woman in the back of Hasley’s pick-up truck was thrown from the bed when Hasley swerved after she pounded on the roof of his cab (read more). The woman was taken to a St. Petersburg hospital by helicopter with serious injuries.
Hasley told troopers he saw the woman fall out of the truck and dropped of his son to check on her while he drove home. He said he left the scene due to the fact he was worried he would have been charged with a DUI had he called the police once the women was injured. Hasley was released on $5,000.00 bail.
If you or anyone in your family needs help with a DUI in Bradenton or has a traffic ticket anywhere in Manatee County, please contact David Haenel at 1-800-FIGHT-IT or online at www.fightyourbradentondui.com to discuss the matter.

The cost of driving in Florida is getting ready to be dramatically increased beginning September 1. Rates will be hiked for everything from renewing your driver’s license to getting a title for your new car and the new costs are considerably higher. Rate increases will be anywhere from 54% to 1400% in one case. (read more)
The additional costs stem directly from the state needing to balance the budget and make-up for large shortfalls in revenue generation. What does this mean to you? Well it used to cost $20 to renew your Florida Driver’s License but it will now cost $48, an increase of 140%. Registering your SUV or larger car will now cost you over $71 instead of the $46 you used to pay. As if the auto industry wasn’t suffering enough already when it comes to new car sales, there is more bad news on that front starting September 1. Registering your new car will now cost over $400 which is an increase of 110% from the old fee.
Driving is expensive with these new fees and the price of gas increasing but when you add a traffic ticket to the mix it can be too much to handle. If you or a loved one has traffic ticket that you need help with, please contact David Haenel at 1-800-FIGHT-IT or online at www.fightyourcase.com.

After waiting years for a final ruling, it appears that over 100 people in Manatee County may have finally received the court order that they were waiting for. According to a recent article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune by Reporter Todd Ruger DUI Cases Imperiled by Battle Over Test, Manatee County Judge Doug Henderson has ruled that the results of breath tests performed on the intoxilyzer 5000 are inadmissible. The 5000 is no longer used in Florida but instead was replaced by the intoxilyzer 8000, which has had its share fair of problems. The manufacturer of both intoxilyzers, CMI of Kentucky, has refused to provide the source code for the machine despite being ordered to do so. Judges in Sarasota and Manatee Counties have sanctioned CMI for not complying with the previous court order. To date, the company is over 2 million dollars in default and that amount is growing daily. The mysterious mythical machine apparently determines the breath alcohol level of an arrested subject, but the source code would reveal if the machine is truly accurate. Manatee County DUI supervising state attorney Erica Arend acknolwedges in the article that the state would be very prejudiced if it could not admit the breath test results. Under Florida law, the State must prove that the person was driving without a breath test above a .08 or while their normal faculties were impaired. In many instances the driver may perform well on field sobriety tests but have a high breath test result. As a result of Judge Henderson’s ruling, the State will be forced to review over 100 cases to determine if they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is impaired. Typically, if the State can’t prove those necessary elements, then they will be forced to reduce the charges to reckless driving or drop the case entirely. Some law firms that have represented hundreds of DUI clients, like Finebloom and Haenel in Sarasota, have already had cases reduced because the State didn’t feel they would succeed after a jury trial.