Field Sobriety Tests: Does officer have a duty to ask if you have any physical conditions that could cause difficulty w/tests?

An officer should ask if you have any conditions that would make it difficult to perform a walk and turn test or a one leg stand including but not limited to ankle, knee, hip or back problems, overweight by more than 50 pounds, over 65 years of age and shoes with heels in excess of 2 inches. Additionally, on the eye tests, the officer should look for unequal pupil size, unequal tracking of a stimulus and resting nystagmus or jerking of the eyes to see if you have any brain injuries, medical conditions or inner ear disorders that could produce false positives on the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test. These guidelines can be found in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) manual on DUI Detection and Standardized Field Sobriety Evaluations. See the link below for a free pdf of the manual.

There is generally no duty to ask those questions. It is typically a matter of departmental policy. If they don't ask it leaves the door open later for the defendant to attribute performance to physical conditions which is inconsistent with the State's theory that performance is based upon intoxication. The point is - they ask, not because they genuinely care about your condition but because they want to gather evidence to rebut any future defense. So, there is no duty - but a department whose officers don't do that are potentially weakening their cases.

The word "duty" in your question implies that there is a legal obligation to inquire about your physical condition. While I don't practice in Arizona, I doubt that your state imposes such a legal obligation. Most do not. However, these "tests" are known as "STANDARDIZED Field Sobriety Tests" precisely because they should be administered in a standardized way. In other words, every officer is trained to the same standards and every officer should administer the test in exactly the same way. Only in this way do the studies that allege that these tests are scientifically reliable have any meaning. If you have some physical condition that prevented your satisfactory performance and the officer failed to determine this, an attorney should bring this fact out during an aggressive cross examination. Please consult with a local DUI defense attorney to explore this and other potential defenses. Best of luck. John Buckley

The other attorneys' answers are correct. Regardless of whether the officer has a duty or not, if he does not ask those questions he is then subject to attack/impeachment at trial.