When a DUI isn't really a DUI at all

May 29, 4:23 PMCollege Sports ExaminerJacob Osterhout

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Those cheerleaders would have been so disappointed.

It's not easy to count backward by sevens from 100. Nor is it an effortless task to touch your finger to your nose over and over again while a stern looking man evaluates your every move. And walking a straight line toe to heel is pretty much like walking on a balance beam, which is no cakewalk.

A perfectly sober individual can fail all three of those tests and that does not mean he is drunk, but good luck telling that to a police officer.

Early last Saturday morning, New Mexico State football coach DeWayne Walker drank three beers before jumping into his brand new GMC Yukon at the Hotel Encanto in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and heading west-bound in the east-bound lane of Lohman Avenue.

Cops looking for drunk drivers on Memorial Day Weekend pulled Walker over in a nearby restaurant parking lot, where he failed three sobriety tests and was arrested for suspected drunken driving. The police report states that Walker couldn't find his car's paperwork and displayed nine signs of intoxication.

According to Ashley Meeks' detailed article in the Las Cruces Sun-News:

In the horizontal gaze test, in which Walker was asked to keep his eyes on a light on the tip of the officer's pen, the officer noted that Walker moved his head and was unable to follow the pen smoothly.

Asked to perform a walk-and-turn test, Walker did not count his steps out loud as instructed, was unable to touch heel to toe on all steps, stepped off the line and raised his arms on one step, took an extra step and stopped walking before he was told to, according to the police report.

After the third sobriety test, the one-leg stand, in which Walker swayed and put his foot down before he was told to, according to the officer's report, he was arrested for DUI at about 12:49 a.m.

Of course, the Las Cruces Police Department didn't have a functioning Breathalyzer at the time of the arrest so they took the new football coach to the Dona Ana County Sheriff's Office to back up their presumptuous DWI. At the sheriff's office just 20 minutes after the initial arrest, Walker took two Breathalyzer tests and in each blew a .01, which is well under the state's legal limit of .08 for presumed intoxication.

The police released Walker on his own recognizance and, on Tuesday, the DWI charge was dropped.

Call it a healthy disdain for authority, but this is the most delightful story to come out all week. Walker, one of nine minority coaches in college football, came within two breaths of having his reputation sullied and his career damaged, all because a cop thought he was walking funny.

I have watched people take these field sobriety tests multiple times and never have any of them passed. In fact, I would go as far as to say that once the cops are giving you a field sobriety test the outcome in their minds has already been decided.

So good for Walker for having three beers and driving the wrong way down a one way road. Somebody has to stand up for the rights of the partially impaired and what better person to do it than a college football coach.