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DUILawDefense.com Blog Celebrates One Year Anniversary |
by admin
Our blog has reached its one year anniversary. We have posted quite a few interesting news items about DUI and related issues.
Blog Ranking: Top 2.3 %
Technorati is a popular blog directory service. It measures the popularity of a given blog as compared to all other sites that have been submitted to its system.
This blog currently has a Technorati rank of 1,612,160, which puts it in the top 2.3% of blogs tracked by Technorati.
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Breath Testing Errors |
by admin
All states have now passed laws lowering the blood-alcohol level to .08%. And most people suspected of violating the law are given breath tests to determine the level of alcohol in their blood. The breathalyzer will take a small sample of the suspect’s breath and estimate how much alcohol is in it — and, from that, estimate how much may be in the blood.
And what that machine says is pretty much the end of it. There will be no second tests. There will be no cross-examination of the machine. Are these machines so reliable and accurate that we have permitted them to become judge and jury?
Scientists universally recognize an inherent error in breath analysis, generally of plus or minus .01%. That means that if everything is working perfectly (an unlikely scenario), a .13% breathalyzer test result can be anywhere from .12% to .14%.This has been acknowledged by courts across the country (see, for example, People v. Campos, 138 Cal.Rptr. 366 (California); Haynes v. Department of Public Safety, 865 P.2d 753 (Alaska); State v. Boehmer, 613 P.2d 916 (Hawaii), recognizing an even larger .0165% inherent error).
What does that tell us about the accuracy of these breathalyzers? Well, let’s take a test result of .10%. Taking inherent error into consideration — and assuming the machine was working perfectly, the officer administers the test correctly, and the suspect’s physiology is normal and perfectly average — the true BAC could be anywhere from .09% to .11%. In other words, the true BAC can be 10% in either direction — or, put another way, anywhere within a 20% margin of error.
visit our website at www.duilawdefense.com
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How Breath Machines Work |
by admin
Did you ever wonder how breathalyzers work? There is a website which will give you a pretty fair idea.
There are many different kinds of “breathalyzers†or breath testing devices. The first of the modern breath testers, manufactured by Smith and Wesson many years ago was called the Breathalyzer.
When I was a young prosecutor we used to call the Smith and Wesson 900A the “Dial-a-Drunk” because the machine’s dial was able to be manipulated by the operator.
Since then, various manufacturers have recognized the growing market and come out with their own models, bearing such names as Intoxilyzer, Intoximeter, DataMaster, AlcoSensor, Alcotest and so on; most of these products have been produced in different model versions, such as the Intoxilyer 4011, 5000 and 8000.
To deal with the confusion, the term “breathalyzer†came to be used as a generic term for any breath testing instrument.
Most of these are evidentiary machines — that is, larger machines generally kept at the police station whose test results are used in evidence. Others are smaller, handheld units carried by officers in the field; generally called PBTs (preliminary breath tests) or PAS (preliminary alcohol screedning). These are less accurate and are usually used as a field sobriety test to help determine whether to arrest a suspect.
The original Breathalyzer operated using a wet chemical method of analysis, employing a disposable glass ampoule of chemicals. Although still occasionally found in law enforcement, this relatively primitive technology was replaced in later machines by infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography or, mainly in handheld units, fuel cell analysis; a couple of the more recent machines use a combination of infrared and fuel cell.
Here is a great website explaining how these different types of machines work:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/breathalyzer.htm
For more information visit our website at www.duilawdefense.com
