Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Thanks to a colleague for circulating the following material about Washington, D.C.'s ongoing and chronic drunk driving prosecution debacle, which I again blogged about last week: - Fraternal Order of Police letter to the city council. - D.C....
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Washington, D.C., prosecutors' recent systematic dismissal of numerous drunk driving prosecutions -- on top of D.C. prosecutors' continuing striking of breath testing scores obtained from Metropolitan Police breathalyzer machines, for a year now -- shouts loud-and-clear how broken is D.C.'s DWI prosecution...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Last year, I blogged about a 6-5 Virginia intermediate appellate court opinion affirming a drunk driving conviction where the DWI was allegedy committed on private property not used as a thoroughfare, and not committed in the presence of...
Drinking alcohol was a fun experience for me, with an altered state of conscience when I drank enough. Certainly, alcohol brings out the dark side of many people, and I believe that we would have a better society if everyone who got drunk instead smoked...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. A silver lining in the District of Columbia’s breathalyzer debacle is that it may further convince judges and jurors that breathalyzers amount to junk science, or else that their results are highly unreliable, due to unreliability of the...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Earlier this year, I blogged about Washington, D.C.’s breathalyzer machine debacle. This week, D.C. officials admitted that almost 400 people were convicted with the inaccurate machines. Worse, half of them went to jail, usually for at least five days,...
Recently, I posted a lawyer listserv message asking about Maryland-licensed alcohol education programs that will not do a knee-jerk at a 0.15 breathalyzer test result to draw the line between a six-session (two hours per session) and twenty-six-session alcohol education program. When a colleague responded...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Particularly now that Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S.Ct. 2527 (2009), has become firmly entrenched in the Constitutional landscape, Sixth Amendment challenges to machine-based speed calculations should be more persuasive than ever when the people who calibrated the machine do not...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. An officer arrested a man for DWI on private property, and was not sure whether he would mention the possibility of taking a breathalyzer test, not knowing whether Virginia's implied consent law for taking a breathalyzer test applied....
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Last August, I addressed merger of DUI and DWI per se. As an update, last January, Maryland's intermediate appellate court ruled that "when a defendant is convicted of both DUI and DUI per se, arising out of the same...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. On March 3, I blogged about attacking horizontal gaze nystagmus testimony. Thanks to JR for commenting to that blog entry with a link to Illinois v. McKown (IL, Feb. 19, 2010) which in part says: "A properly trained police...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Horizontal gaze nystagmus tests are junk science, but not all judges have the same view. Here are some items to consider in attacking horizontal gaze nystagmus tests: “The cases and literature indicate that, in addition to alcohol, many...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Breathalyzer tests are junk science. At best, breathalyzer machines should only be used to determine whether to obtain a more thorough blood alcohol screening, through a blood test (or a balloon test, according to one forensic chemist whom I...
Forensic toxicologists and forensic chemists are common experts for challenging the accuracy and reliability of breathalyzer tests. Sometimes an engineer should be consulted for providing analysis and testimony about the breathalyzer, including testing the breathalyzer with such equipment as an oscilloscope. One engineer who does such...
Almost hitting another vehicle is not legal grounds to stop the suspect vehicle, absent sufficiently stated reasonable articulable suspicion for negligent or reckless driving. Lewis v. Maryland, 398 Md. 349, 920 A.2d 1080 (2007). ...
Thanks to the Kavinoky law firm for posting this list of expert witnesses for drunk driving defense. Included in that list is Patrick Demers, whom I have retained several times as an expert witness. ...
NOTE: This blogposting is being re-uploaded, after some WYSYWIG problems kept delivering faulty formatting. The jurisdictions where I practice criminalize both drunk driving (DUI) and driving with a blood alcohol content over 0.08 (DWI). If a defendant is convicted of both, the defense lawyer should be...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. If you are going to drive after drinking alcohol, why agree to perform the junk science "tests" requested by a cop suspecting you of drunk driving? Ironically, today Maryland's highest court mandated expert testimony to present evidence on...
Image from National Institute of Standards & Technology. Perhaps Connecticut DWI defense lawyer James O. Ruane overstates the matter by calling the Intoxilyzer 5000 KKK in a box.Certainly, breath testing for blood alcohol content is an oppressive junk science system that is perpetuated by court rulings...
Bill of Rights (From public domain.) Who wants police to be permitted to pin down a drunk driving suspect to draw blood? What medical professional in his or her right mind would agree to draw the pinned-down suspect's blood? Then again, will some police just take the...
