TLDR
- The moment the officer asks you to step out of the car, say “I want a lawyer, and I will not answer questions without one,” and then stop talking.
- Roadside sobriety tests and the handheld breath device are voluntary in Arizona, and the officer scoring them is the same officer building the case against you.
- The blood or breath test at the station is different, because refusing it costs your license for twelve months and the police get a warrant and take the sample anyway.
- You will likely be arrested either way, and silence keeps the case smaller than anything you say will.
The first minute of the stop
Pull over as soon as it is safe. Signal, slow down, and stop on the shoulder or in a parking lot. Turn off the engine, roll the window down, and put both hands on the wheel. The officer is watching how you drive to the curb and how you handle the car before a word is spoken, and every wobble goes in the report.
Hand over your license, registration and proof of insurance when asked. Arizona requires you to identify yourself and produce those documents. Digging through the glove box for them counts against you, so know where they are before you drive. An open beer in the cup holder counts against you too, as a separate open container charge on top of the DUI.
Then comes the question every DUI stop turns on. “Have you had anything to drink tonight?” The officer wants an admission. Your answer becomes the first line of the probable cause statement, and there is no good version of it. “Two beers” is an admission. “Nothing” gets tested against a breath number an hour later. “Where are you coming from?” is the same question in a different shirt.
Do not answer it. Say, politely, “I would rather not answer questions.” You do not have to say where you were, what you drank, or how long ago. You are required to stay in the car, hand over your papers, and follow lawful orders about where to stand. Nothing more. Arizona treats a traffic stop as a brief detention, and the officer needed a reason to make it. Whether the police had a reason to stop you is the first thing a lawyer checks.
Stay calm and stay polite. Do not argue, do not get out unless told to, and do not reach around the car. Rudeness never wins a stop, and it plays on body camera at trial.
When the officer asks you to step out of the car
This is Zachary Divelbiss’s golden rule, and it is the one line to memorize from this post.
The request to step out is not a formality. By the time an officer asks you out of the car on a DUI stop, the officer already believes there is probable cause to arrest you. The report is half written. What happens next is not a search for the truth about whether you are impaired. It is the collection of evidence for a case the officer has decided to make.
So the instant you hear “step out of the vehicle for me,” step out, and say this: “I want a lawyer, and I will not answer questions without one.”
Then stop. Do not fill the silence. Do not soften it with “I only had one.” Do not walk the officer through your evening. Repeat the sentence when you are asked again, and you will be asked again.
Three things about that sentence.
You do not need a lawyer’s name or number. People stall because they think asking for a lawyer means naming one. It does not. The words alone are the trigger. Once you ask clearly, the officer is on notice, and anything pulled out of you afterward becomes a problem for the prosecutor rather than for you.
The power belongs to you, not the lawyer. Nobody is driving to the roadside. Nobody needs to. You invoke the right by saying the words, and you protect the right by staying quiet afterward.
Silence is not evidence of guilt. The prosecutor is not allowed to argue to a jury that you must have been drunk because you asked for a lawyer. What the prosecutor is allowed to use is every word you volunteer, so volunteer none.
If you want to understand why so many smart people talk anyway, read why it is so hard to say no to the police. The pull to explain is human. The report does not care.
What you can refuse at the roadside
Two things happen next on most stops, and both are optional.
The first is the field sobriety tests. Walk and turn. One leg stand. The eye test where the officer moves a pen across your face and watches your pupils follow it. Officers rarely say these are voluntary, and they are. Arizona attaches no license penalty and no separate charge to declining a roadside sobriety test.
Think about who is scoring them. The same officer who has already decided to arrest you is counting how many times you swayed and whether you stepped off the line. Sober people fail these tests on a dark shoulder with headlights in their eyes. There is no passing score that sends you home. There is only more evidence for the report.
Decline them. “I am not going to do any tests. I want a lawyer.” Calm, short, repeated.
The second is the handheld breath device, sometimes called a portable breath test or PBT. It is also voluntary. Its number is generally kept out of trial because the device is not calibrated and maintained like the station machine, but the officer uses it to lock in the arrest decision and to shape everything written afterward. Decline it the same way.
The line is simple. At the roadside in Arizona, nothing you are asked to perform is required. Documents, yes. Getting out of the car when ordered, yes. Tests, no.
At the station the chemical test is different
Here the advice flips, and people who miss the flip pay for it.
After arrest, the officer asks you to submit to a blood or breath test at the station or in a DUI van. This is the evidentiary test, the one that produces the number on the charging document. Arizona’s implied consent law says that by driving on Arizona roads you already agreed to this test if arrested for DUI. You are still able to refuse. The cost of refusing is steep and the benefit is close to zero.
Refuse and the MVD suspends your license for twelve months, or two years if you refused once before within the past 84 months. The sample gets taken anyway. The officer reads a form, you say no, the officer calls a judge, and a telephonic search warrant arrives in minutes. A phlebotomist draws your blood with the warrant in hand. The prosecutor ends up with the number and the refusal.
So Zachary’s advice at the station is to consent to the chemical test. Say “I want a lawyer” again, keep declining to answer questions about your evening, and let them take the sample. A refusal is a year without a license plus a jury instruction that lets the prosecutor argue you refused because you knew what the result would be. The refusal decision has enough moving parts to deserve its own post, so this section stays short.
One more thing before you leave the station. The officer hands you an admin per se form, often pink, that doubles as your notice of license suspension. As of 2026, you have 30 days from the date on that notice to request a hearing through the MVD or the suspension becomes final. Keep the form and get it to a lawyer that week.
The Law Behind This
| Charge or relief | What the law says | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| DUI, impaired to the slightest degree or 0.08 | A.R.S. § 28-1381 makes it a crime to drive while impaired to the slightest degree, with an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more within two hours of driving, or with certain drugs or their metabolites in your body | At least 10 days in jail on a first offense with all but one suspended after screening, a fine of at least $250 plus assessments, and an ignition interlock through the MVD |
| Extreme and super extreme DUI | A.R.S. § 28-1382 covers an alcohol concentration of 0.15 or more, with a higher tier at 0.20 or more | Jail floors jump to 30 consecutive days at 0.15 and 45 at 0.20, with larger fines and assessments |
| Aggravated DUI | A.R.S. § 28-1383 makes a DUI a felony when your license is suspended or revoked, on a third offense within 84 months, with a child under 15 in the car, while an interlock is required, or while driving the wrong way | Felony exposure, prison time, and a license revocation instead of a suspension |
| Admin per se license suspension | A.R.S. § 28-1385 lets the officer serve a suspension order at the arrest when the test shows 0.08 or more or a drug metabolite, and gives you 30 days to request a hearing | Ninety days without driving, or 30 days plus 60 restricted days when you qualify, unless the hearing goes your way |
What if you already answered the questions?
Most people who call us did not read this post before the stop. They said “two beers.” They did the walk and turn. They blew into the handheld device. The case is still winnable, and the reasons are the same ones a lawyer checks on every DUI.
Statements get suppressed when the officer kept asking after you asked for a lawyer, or when you were in custody and never heard your rights read. Sobriety tests get picked apart on video, because the standardized instructions are long and officers skip steps, and because a test scored on an uneven shoulder at midnight is not the test the training manual describes. The stop itself gets challenged when the reason for it was thin, and a stop that falls takes everything after it down too.
What you said matters. It is not the whole case. Bring the paperwork, tell your lawyer exactly what happened in your case, word for word as best you remember, and let the lawyer sort what hurts from what helps. Arizona’s DUI law reaches impairment to the slightest degree, so the prosecutor needs no number to file, which is why your roadside words carry weight.
How a DUI attorney uses the stop itself
A DUI case is built at the roadside, and it is won or lost on the record of that roadside. Our Arizona DUI lawyers start every case by pulling the body camera, the dash camera, the dispatch log and the officer’s report, then lining them up minute by minute.
Three things we look for. First, the reason for the stop, because a lane drift the camera does not show is a stop that falls. Second, the gap between what the officer wrote and what the video shows during the sobriety tests. Third, the chemical test. Brielle Schumpe leads our DUI defense, and on blood cases we send the sample for independent retesting instead of taking the crime lab’s number at face value. A retest that comes back under the tier on the complaint changes the plea conversation.
We handle the MVD hearing in-house rather than sending you elsewhere, and that hearing doubles as an early chance to question the officer under oath before the criminal case, which runs through a city or county court within the Arizona court system, gets moving. Clients get recorded video updates after every court date. The firm holds 250+ five-star Google reviews, and fees are flat with payment plans listed on our pricing page. Read what a DUI is in Arizona for the charge itself, and look through our case victories to see how stops like yours have ended.
Our Results
The client faced a misdemeanor DUI charge in a city court. We worked the stop and the evidence from the first minute forward, and the case ended with the DUI charge dismissed in full. Read the full result.
The client faced two DUI counts from one stop, impairment to the slightest degree and the alcohol concentration count. The impairment count is the one built on what the officer saw and heard at the roadside, and that count was dismissed. The case resolved on the alcohol concentration count alone. Read the full result.
The client faced a DUI charge with jail, an ignition interlock and a DUI on the record for life. The charge was reduced to reckless driving with zero ignition interlock and no DUI conviction on the record. Every case turns on its own record, and past results do not predict a future one. Read the full result.
Call a DUI attorney before your first court date
The MVD clock started the night of the stop, and your first court date arrives within weeks. Call Future First Criminal Law at 602-900-7625. Phones are answered around the clock, and consultations are scheduled during business hours. Bring the pink form, the citation and everything you remember about what was said and when. We keep good people out of jail.
The roadside tests themselves get a full breakdown in our guide to whether field sobriety tests are mandatory in Arizona.
Before you decide a lawyer is out of reach, read five myths about hiring a criminal defense attorney in Arizona, including why a consultation does not produce a surprise bill.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I say if I get pulled over for DUI in Arizona?
Say as little as possible. Hand over your license, registration and insurance, and decline questions about where you were or what you drank. Once the officer asks you to step out of the car, say “I want a lawyer, and I will not answer questions without one,” and repeat it as often as needed.
Do I have to tell the officer where I am coming from?
No. Arizona requires you to identify yourself and hand over your documents, and nothing more. Where you were, who you were with and what you drank are questions built to supply probable cause, and you are free to decline them politely.
Do I need a lawyer’s name or phone number to ask for one?
No. The words “I want a lawyer” are the trigger, with or without a name attached. You hold that power at the roadside, and no lawyer needs to be reachable for it to count.
Will asking for a lawyer get me arrested?
Asking for a lawyer does not cause the arrest, and staying quiet does not prevent it. By the time you are asked out of the car, the officer has usually decided. Asking for a lawyer keeps the case from growing while the arrest plays out.
Is the handheld breath test at the car the same as the test at the station?
No. The handheld device at the roadside is voluntary, and its number is generally kept out of trial. The breath or blood test at the station is the evidentiary test under Arizona’s implied consent law, and refusing that one carries a twelve-month license suspension.
Should I refuse the blood or breath test at the station?
Our advice is to consent to it. Refusing brings a twelve-month suspension, and the police get a telephonic warrant and draw blood anyway, so the prosecutor ends up with both the number and the refusal. Ask for a lawyer, answer no questions, and let them take the sample.
Should I answer questions after I am arrested?
No. Arrest does not change the rule, and the ride to the station is full of casual questions meant to sound like small talk. Repeat that you want a lawyer and will not answer questions without one, then stay quiet.
What is the pink paper the officer gave me?
It is the admin per se notice, and it serves as your notice of license suspension from the MVD. You have 30 days from the date on it to request a hearing, and the suspension becomes final if you miss that window. Keep it and get it to a lawyer within the week.
Does staying silent make me look guilty to a jury?
No. The prosecutor is not allowed to argue that you asked for a lawyer because you were guilty, and the judge will not permit it. What the prosecutor is allowed to use is anything you said on your own, which is why silence is the safer record.