New Bride Arrested for DUI After 0.00 on the Breath Test

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Welcome once again to Leato's Law.

[00:00:02]Here's Steve Leato.

[00:00:03]>> We've talked before about people getting pulled over by the police. The police accuse somebody of driving under the influence. The police have the person perform a breathalyzer or a preliminary breath test and they blow zeros zeros and they arrest them anyway. And so I've done stories like that and people might say, "Steve, you know, you've already done that story. Uh you'd have to add a twist to it to make it more interesting to do it again. Oh no, what about the timing of it? What if this happened around a very important event in your life? So, Miguel St. Notes and Steve checked this out for the New York Post.

[00:00:35]Bianca Hayward wrote this. Bride's wedding erected as cop body cam reveals bizarre arrest. Now, it didn't happen during the wedding, but it happened shortly thereafter. A bride's dream wedding turned into a legal nightmare, and she claims she was charged with DUI despite being sober. The woman's from Fresno had only tied the knot the day before. She claims she was arrested for DUI by Phoenix police despite blowing 0.0 on a breath test. They often call that a triple0. Yeah. Blue zeros. She also later tested negative for drugs and alcohol according to a federal lawsuit, which means that they did not detect anything in her system that she shouldn't have had in there. The bizarre bus happened December 29th of 2024 when she was reportedly pulled over during a late night drive in a rental car with her new husband in the passenger seat.

[00:01:30]The police said they initiated the traffic stop because she ran a red light and had issues with the vehicle's rear lights, but things quickly escalated.

[00:01:40]In footage obtained by a TV station, one of the officers admitted on body cam footage that they weren't expecting an alcohol reading before administering the breathalyzer. In other words, the guy suspected they might get zeros. Moments later, the breathalyzer came back with triple zeros. Despite the clean test, she was handcuffed and arrested on suspicion of DUI.

[00:02:03]Officer told her, "I do believe that you're impaired." pointing to signs like her red eyes and her pupil size to justify the arrest. After she was taken into custody, one of the arresting officers was allegedly recorded saying, and this is a quote, "They're going to kick me off the squad if I don't get a DUI."

[00:02:24]Her attorneys say that statement raises concerns about pressure and unofficial quotas to make DUI arrests. And of course, the police will say there's no such thing as a quota. And then when people point out that there are numbers you tell people they need to hit, those are performance incentives.

[00:02:43]This case arises from the Phoenix Police Department officers disregard of established constitutional rules governing DUI stops and arrests, the lawsuit states, alleging the officers made the arrest to further their careers and follow the city's inappropriate policy, practice, or custom of manufacturing DUI arrests.

[00:03:02]The DUI case ultimately fell apart, so prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges in April 25, and a judge later tossed out her license suspension after authorities failed to present sufficient evidence to support that. But the woman says the fallout on her life has been forever changed by defendants wrongful arrest and prosecution of her. In her lawsuit filed in December against the city of Phoenix and the officers involved, her lawyers state that the ordeal caused delays in her cancer treatment. hurt her nursing studies and saw her miss part of her honeymoon. And so, like I said, the wedding took place and the arrest was apparently the next day.

[00:03:43]If there's a word to describe this case, it is fabricated. The lawsuit says defendants stopped her as she was driving based upon a fabricated traffic infraction, field tested her based upon fabricated observations, and then jailed and prosecuted her based upon even more fabricated evidence and and actually there's also a severe lack of evidence.

[00:04:05]She is seeking damages, policy changes, and to have the arrest wiped from her record. And so she did get arrested. uh she she did not get convicted of anything and in fact everything appears to have been uh dismissed in that sense legally, but we've heard about this before and I've seen traffic stops before. You can watch traffic stop videos on YouTube. There's thousands of them and I've seen them before where somebody gets pulled over and the police have an interaction with the person. The person, I think you're under the influence of something. I've seen some where the person looks to be completely trashed out of their gourd where people you can almost smell the alcohol through your screen.

[00:04:48]Okay? And I know people are going to go, "Steve, you can't smell alcohol." It's a reference to alcoholic beverages. Okay?

[00:04:54]It's a it's it's it's a statement. Just just move on. So, I've also seen where somebody's acting perfectly rationally and I've seen a police officer go, I think you're intoxicated based on some of some clues I'm picking up on. And the problem is that the clues that they pick up on are so subjective in nature that an officer can say, "Well, I saw the person had glassy eyes." Okay. at night with a body cam on, you can't see on the body cam whether or not the person's got glassy eyes or not. So, when the police officer says they had glassy eyes, the court's got to go, well, okay, there's there's no evidence one way or the other because you couldn't see that on a body cam. The officer can also say, I smelled alcoholic beverage coming from the I it smelled like beer.

[00:05:46]Okay, it smelled like beer. Again, body cam doesn't pick that up and record that any meaningful way. And now, if there's two or three officers and they all say they smell beer, that that might add a little bit to it. But it sounds like there's more than one police officer at this stop and you've actually got the guy allegedly saying they're going to kick me off the squad if I don't get a DUI.

[00:06:13]and somebody else admitted on body cam they weren't expecting an alcohol reading. Like they were actually anticipating the possibility of getting zeros.

[00:06:26]And so the weird part is that I've mentioned before I've represented people who got drunk driving tickets. Okay?

[00:06:32]I've represented those. Uh been a while, but I used to represent people for that.

[00:06:36]And I can tell you right now that of all the people I represented, I never had anybody who didn't blow the numbers that would make you in trouble for drinking and driving. Never had somebody do that.

[00:06:48]I've heard of people getting zeros, you know, blowing zeros. Uh very very good friend of mine, somebody I know very very well, uh got pulled over doing something very very crazy in a car and uh the police officer asked him, you know, would you do a preliminary breath test? Sure. Zero's still got a ticket for what he did in the car, but he didn't get arrested for DUI.

[00:07:13]And that's the thing is that you might look at somebody how they're behaving and go they they they could be under the influence, but when they blow zeros on the PBT and zeros at the station, you kind of got to go, okay, they probably don't have alcohol in their system. They probably don't. They probably don't.

[00:07:32]Now, apparently they took a blood test and ran that that came back negative for everything also. So, you can't blame it on something other than alcohol.

[00:07:43]It's a wild case. And so, this is possibly a very good example of what's wrong with police departments having quotas or or or performance incentives.

[00:07:58]Um, you know, the idea that you must go out and write this many tickets or arrest this many drunk drivers or or well, if if there aren't that many drunk drivers out that month, guess what? Now, I know there are people out there and statistically speaking, Steve, there's almost always going to be a drunk driver on the road in Phoenix or wherever it might be on any given night. There probably is. There probably is. A large city like that probably is. What are the odds that the police department, which is horribly outnumbered, if you simply look at how many cars are on the road, what are the odds that they're going to actually intercept one of those drunk drivers that particular night? And how many do they need to intercept to hit their performance goals? How many? So you you you really shouldn't have anything that encourages a police officer to look at somebody who blows zeros and you know has no alcohol in their system and say well I I still I still think you're impaired. I still think you're impaired based on what the size of your pupils.

[00:09:02]I understand there are things that that a person can look at and go that's an indicator. as an indicator, but that's not proof. That's not that's that's that's barely evidence. And that's why that's simply an indicator that might get you to the point where you can ask them to do the PBT, preliminary breath test, but it's not enough to arrest somebody for. So, here the deal is she got married on day one and arrested on day two. and her arrest presumably meant she spent the night in jail and spent a bunch of money trying to get the rental car out of the impound.

[00:09:38]Uh unless they let her newly wet husband to drive it off, which they might have done, but it's a crazy story and I I hate to see stories like this. So, if there's more on this coming up, I will update it. It very well might settle quietly out of court as many cases do.

[00:09:57]But Miguel, thank you for sending that to the New York Post. And Bianca Hayward wrote that bride's wedding wrecked as cop body cam reveals bizarre arrest. But to be clear, the arrest didn't take place the day of the wedding. It took place the very next day. Questions, your comments, put them below. We'll talk to you later. Bye-bye.

[00:10:14]>> Thank you for watching Leato's Law.

[00:10:18]Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.