DUI Defender

As I wrote on October 14 of this year, the requirements for people on probation for DUI or alcohol related driving charges will change to a zero tolerance on January 1, 2009. However, in reading the draft legislation, I didn’t notice that the Legislature added a requirement to provide a breath sample in the field, so while non-probationers have the legal right to refuse the Premininary Alcohol Screen (PAS), a person on probation for an alcohol related driving offense will not.

In changing the law to require persons on probation for drinking related driving offenses to provide PAS tests the Legislature did not change the standards relating to how such evidence is acquired, meaning that the same lax standards that apply to it as an optional test will also apply to it as a mandatory test. What this means is that the standards that California has set in place for evidientiary breath testing will not apply, if the State can demonstrate that the machine was in working order, that the person operating the test was trained and that the proper procedures were follwed the test will be admited. More and more we see tests, that weren’t required under the law, fail to meet the lowest level of scientific protocols and yet, increasingly, we see Judges shirk their role as “gate keeper” and let the test in. Even clear violations of California’s rules relating to chemical testing will be tolerated in some jurisdictions. In these Jurisdictions a person may have their probation violated by a number that was generated by a machine that has a margin of error of .02, that may have been operated by an untrained or improperly trained officer (see, CCR 1221.4(a)(3)(A-E); 1221.4(a)(4)), that may not have been calibrated or maintained in accordance with California State law or that may have been adminstered in a manner that is not scientifically valid (See, CCR1219.3; 1221.1). Unfortunately, the probationer will not have the luxury of a jury to try and convince of the injustice, the decision rests with the Gatekeeper, the Judge.

Next time you are listening to court case in which the defendant is proclaiming their innocence and the sole evidence for the prosecution is circumstantial evidence. When suddenly the prosecution trots out an “expert” with some sort of mechanical wizardry that purports to link the defendant to the crime. The scientific method involves some sort of analysis based upon dubious scientific theory, think it doesn’t happen? Think again.

Two years ago the FBI rejected the notion that lead bullets could be linked to a crime scene through analysis of the chemical composition of the bullet and bullets subsequently found on a suspect. This “scientific” technique was based on the theory that each “batch” of lead from which bullets were made had some sort of unique quality that could separate each one batch from another. The technique was initially developed when President Kennedy was assassinated and grew to be a commonly accepted science, then, in 2004, the National Academy of Sciences determined that the technique was unreliable and misleading. Interestingly, the technique was commonly accepted for over three decades before finally it was deemed unreliable.

Now, you would think that the FBI would make it a priority to discover which convictions were based in full or in part upon the misleading “scientific” technique, since our justice system is founded upon “innocent until proven guilty” and a lot of societal lip service is given to the importance of freedom, yet nothing has been done.

It is a sad, sad statement on our legal system that citizen’s who may have wrongly convicted for crimes based on this “scientific” technique continue to sit in jail with no one fighting the wrongful nature of the conviction.

You may ask yourself, why would a blog dedicated to DUI find this interesting? Well, as it turns out we have been fighting over breath testing for decades, the only true measure is that from the blood, every other measure is a “scientific” guess based upon some circumstantial evidence. The breath is measured either by elctrochemical cell technology or by infrared spectroscopy, neither of which measure the actual blood alcohol concentration. Will we eventually prevail on the issue of breath testing as circumstantial evidence as opposed to direct evidence? Will we ever manage to win the challenge that the “technology” is merely a guess? That the foundation of the theory is dubious and that the results are “unreliable and misleading?” One can only hope…

Presented in this months Reason Magazine is an article distilling the essence of the argument in favor of competitive crime labs, and independent crime labs. Among the problems cited by the article are the pro-prosecution bias of the laboratory personnel and people testifying on behalf of the “evidence” analyzed and documented by the crime labs. The article also cites an error rate as high as 10% for fluid analysis (blood) which would mean that the results of one out of every ten blood samples analyzed would be wrong. Now this in and of itself doesn’t mean that the measurement is above the actual value but simply that it is wrong. In combination with the pro-prosecution bias this is a very disturbing statistic.

Many times potential or existing client has questions relating to a possible drug interaction with either something they ate or drank on the evening they were arrested for suspicion of DUI. Our office seeks the assistance of counsel from a forensic alcohol expert. However, many lay people may be surprised that such information may be available on the web: http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html. This website provides in-depth information regarding drugs and possible interactions, it may be the first step toward deciding whether a “drug interaction” defense exists in your case.

A qualified DUI lawyer can help flesh out the facts necessary to set-up the interaction defense as it is possible that some interactions can provide reasonable explanations for physiological observations made by law enforcement and even explain elevated blood/breath alcohol measurements. Again, drug interactions can and do provide reasonable alternative explanations for otherwise questionable observations. The first step may be investigating the interactions yourself.

Check out this video, the lawyer demonstrates a flaw in the design and manufacture of the Draeger handheld breath test. The video supports the defense that law enforcement, by blocking the exit port of the device, can manipulate a below the legal limit test into an above the legal limit test. The video is a remarkable demonstration of a simple but effective method of producing incriminating evidence from an otherwise innocent person.

The Department of Justice in Watsonville revealed that two separate times in 2006 their breath testing program was flawed, so seriously that the 355 DUI cases affected may be dismissed. The issue arose because the Lab failed the proficiency testing conducted by the State Department of Health Services, while the District Attorney and Crime Lab down played the effect the failed proficiency tests had on the cases involved, the simple fact remained that the machines were not functioning properly, the results are tainted and the prosecutions should be dropped. If we can’t have faith in our prosecutor’s to do the right thing and protect the public from flawed chemical testing, who can we trust.

As I wrote earier, the source code battle has expanded beyond Florida and New Jersey, in Minnesota prosecutor’s and CMI missed the deadline to provide the defense with the source code for the Intoxilyzer 5000 EN. The court may dismiss the “per se” charge as a result of the failure.

The source code is the software that underlies the basic operation of the breath testing device. It essentially determines how the measurement is converted into blood alcohol concentration measurements used in criminal prosecutions. The reason why the code is important is that the software averages the readings taken during the sample to create a number, many scientists think that the breath alcohol measurement will vary dramatically depending upon where in the breath sample the measurement is taken. This variance could result in an overstatement of the blood alcohol measurement. The software also converts the breath alcohol measurement into a blood alcohol measurement. Many manufacturer’s of breath alcohol testing equipment have used the “proprietary” software defense, however, it seems to be failing in some court’s.

The “per se” charge as discussed above is a secondary charge that most persons arrested for DUI face, it states that you were DUI because your blood alcohol concentration was .08 or above. The so-called legal limit is now in effect in all 50 states since the award of federal highway funds was tied to legistlature’s enacting the limit. The importance of the “per se” charge should not be underestimated as it provides the prosecution with an alternative theory when a person is stopped for an equipment violation and performs well on field tests and has few if any of the “objective symptoms of intoxication.” (Odor of an alcoholic beverage, thick or slurred speech, red/watery eyes, unsteady gait, etc.).

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently awarded $400,000 to a MADD chapter in New Mexico, this money was intended to fund a program to watch how DUI cases proceed through the New Mexico criminal justice system. It is also intended to make recommendations on improvements that can be made to reduce recidivism and track how cases are handled within the system. The unfortunate aspect of this award is that MADD has a dog in fight, they have been the leading edge of the fight to reduce/eliminate constitutional protections for criminal defendants, their mission is to promote prohibition. I can already predict their report, it will be an indictment of the justice system, defense lawyers finding problems with equipment and “technicalities” lead the list of “problems.” Neither of these are the problem, if a machine is to provide evidence against a citizen acused of a crime, it must be reliable, it must be maintained in accordance with both legal and scientific standards, failure to comply should result in the test being excluded from evidence. The defense attorney who uses the law to defend their client is hardly the problem, they are simply the vehicle provided by the law to protect us from government action. This new award of taxpayer money puts the fox in charge of the henhouse, no good can possibly come from this.

This is the very issue that the State of Washington finds itself determining. In 2001 an accident occurred killing several people. The State has alleged that the blood alcohol concentration of the driver causing the accident was .12, however, the blood sample has been destroyed. This cuts to the very core of our legal system, the right of the accused to confront the evidence against them, be it a person who witnessed a crime or some other physical evidence. The State must determine whether the blood alcohol concentration is admissible despite the fact that it was never confirmed by an independent laboratory and is no destroyed. The fact of the matter is that it is irrelevant that the destruction occurred inadvertently, the fact is that the defense has been denied the right to evaluate and confirm (or contradict) the evidence. Whether or not the accused was .12 or not, the evidence must be excluded from the case, it is a fundamental right of the accused to confront the evidence against him/her, this right is denied by the actions of the State of Washington and should not benefit in its prosecution for its conduct.

A recent study linking listening and learning to specific performance has found that as many as 7% of the population may have a problem “connecting the dots” between what they hear and what they are expected to do with what they hear. “The finding may help researchers better understand a broad and complex group of disorders-called auditory processing disorders (APDs)-in which individuals with otherwise normal hearing ability have trouble making sense of the sounds around them.

“Our auditory system doesn’t end with our ears. It also includes the part of our brain that helps us interpret the sounds we hear. This is the first study to show that people vary widely in their ability to process what they hear, and these differences are due largely to heredity,” James F. Battey, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIDCD said.

The term “auditory processing” refers to functions performed primarily by the brain that help a listener interpret sounds. Among other things, auditory processing enables us to tell the direction a sound is coming from, the timing and sequence of a sound, and whether a sound is a voice we need to listen to or background noise we should ignore. Most people don’t even realize they possess these skills, much less how adept they are at them.

Auditory processing skills play a role in a child’s language acquisition and learning abilities, although the extent of that relationship is not well understood.”

As a theory this may help explain how young, healthy persons with low blood alcohol concentrations perform poorly on field sobriety exercizes.