William B. Mange

Criminal Defense Lawyer in Austin, Texas

Criminal Law Blog

September 26, 2009

Here’s an experiment worth trying when you are stone cold sober. Print this “Statutory Warning." This is the sheet of paper that a police officer reads to you shortly after he arrests you for DWI and right before he asks you to blow or give blood. Don’t read it right now. Just print it out and hand it to a friend, along with a glass of cool lemonade, and give him a place to sit down.

Now, you go run a long distance. It might be 10 miles, or it might be 100 yards. Doesn’t matter. Just run whatever is a long distance for you. The purpose of the run is to get your body feeling about how it would if you were really nervous.

When you get back to where your friend is, with your heart still pounding from running so far, have him read the Statutory warning to you. He shouldn’t read it quite as fast as most auctioneers talk, but he should read it pretty fast. When he finishes, he should say, “so, what’s your answer? Yes or no?”

Now, the real question I want you to consider is: did you understand what your friend just read to you?

The hypothesis that this experiment is designed to test is that most nervous, stone cold sober people, who have the Statutory Warning read to them (at the usual speed at which officers read these things) cannot understand it.

If you do the experiment, write me an e-mail and tell me what your results are. I’ll tally the results and publish whether my hypothesis was proven correct or proven wrong.

William B. Mange

Criminal Defense Lawyer in Austin, Texas

Criminal Law Blog

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