A Lake County, Florida, man was arrested in his own front yard on DUI charges last week. According to a news report, the man was repeatedly backing his truck into the trees in his yard when deputies arrived.

His neighbors had apparently observed him doing this and they called police. When deputies arrived to the man's home, they reportedly observed an odor of alcohol and recorded that the man said he had been drinking vodka. The driver failed a field sobriety test and deputies administered a Breathalyzer test, which read .242. Of course, we know these tests are not 100 percent accurate.

As we know, even when the evidence seems heavily weighted against a DUI defendant, it is very important that he or she seeks to put together a strong criminal defense. Often, due to the circumstances of an arrest or issues with the evidence, it is possible to have DUI charges dropped or reduced. When this is not possible, an experienced criminal defense attorney will work to achieve the best possible results to the case.

The information that we have on this case is all from a news report, and it appears that the information in this report has been culled from the arresting officer's report. So, although this man was acting strangely and scored high on a breath test, it is important to remember the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.

In many cases, factors other than alcohol--such as a medication side effect or a mental health issue--can cause odd behaviors like this. Again, we do not have all of the facts in this DUI case.

Source: News4Jax.com, "Lake County man gets DUI in own front yard," April 12, 2012