Chicago – rom www.suntimes.com – A Cook County judge has sided with a Playboy model who maintains that she shouldn’t have been arrested for DUI after police pulled her over for running a red light on the Near North Side earlier this year.

Though prosecutors still can appeal Judge Thomas V. Lyons’ ruling Tuesday, Crystal McCahill’s lawyer said the case against his client is now “severely undermined.”

“She’s delighted,” attorney Michael J. Monaco said of his client, who was Playboy’s Miss May 2009.

The 5-foot-7-inch brunette had a blood-alcohol level more than twice Illinois’ standard for DUI when she drove a 2005 Volkswagen Passat through a red light at Chicago and Wood last Jan. 7, according to police.

The police said McCahill told an officer: “I had three shots at Climax nightclub, where I work.” The police said McCahill “mumbled,” had a “strong odor” of alcohol on her breath and had “red-bloodshot and glassy eyes.”

In court on Tuesday, Monaco didn’t question the reason for the stop. But he disputed police claims that McCahill voluntarily accompanied an officer to the District 13 station. Monaco said she believed she was under arrest — and there wasn’t sufficient reason to make the arrest because the officer had not yet performed a field-sobriety test. Tests were done later at the police station, Monaco said.

“If he’d done them on the scene and she’d failed them, it probably would have been a different result,” Monaco said.

Roderick Drew, a Chicago Police spokesman said: “We believe that the officer acted appropriately and consistently with our policies, and the evidence indicates that she was, in fact, intoxicated.”

McCahill is due back in court next month.