February 2008 - Posts

• Breathing Paint Fumes = High Breath Test Results?

  In “Why Breathalyzers Don’t Measure Alcohol”, I mentioned one of the many reliability problems breath machines have: they falsely report any of thousands of chemical compounds as “alcohol”.  Scientific studies have clearly proven this defect, a problem referred to as non-specificity.  My post “Driving Under the Influence of…Gasoline?” presented a practical example of one such [...] Posted Feb 28 2008, 01:24 PM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog

• How Good Are Cops at Detecting Intoxication?

  The drunk driving case rests heavily upon the subjective opinions of the arresting officer — the abilities of that officer to correctly assess DUI symptoms of intoxication: observations of driving, personal symptoms (slurred speech, flushed face, etc.), answers to questions, performance on field sobriety tests. It is his DUI report (and his opinion in that [...] Posted Feb 25 2008, 01:03 PM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog

• The Thin Blue Line Exception

  Just the most recent example of the double standard applied when cops, prosecutors or judges are busted by honest officers for drunk driving: Officer Found Not Guilty of OUI Charge Northborough, MA.  Feb. 19  –  A judge has cleared a town police officer of drunken driving after throwing out his blood alcohol reading because it was taken at [...] Posted Feb 21 2008, 01:20 PM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog

• Washington State Says “No” to DUI Scarlet Letter

  I posted yesterday about the Washington State legislature recently refusing to cave in to the Governor and others interested in resurrecting DUI roadblocks found to be illegal by the state supreme court.  In today’s news, that same legislature again balked at further insanities in the “War on Drunk Driving”.  Bill Proposes Yellow License Plates for DUI Drivers Olympia, [...] Posted Feb 15 2008, 01:58 PM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog

• Washington State Says “No” to DUI Roadblocks

  As many of you know, the United States Supreme Court in Michigan v. Sitz found that although sobriety checkpoints were apparent violations of the Fourth Amendment, they were only ”minor” violations.  Permitting police to stop citizens without reason to believe they had done anything wrong, Chief Justice Rehnquist said, was permissible in view of the government’s ongoing “War on Drunk [...] Posted Feb 14 2008, 01:59 PM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog

• The Fading Right to Jury Trial

  Ok, the cop said I looked bad on the field sobriety tests, but I know I’m not guilty: I only had two drinks and I’ve got witnesses. No matter what the police say, I can tell my side of the story to my fellow citizens and let them decide. Right? Well….Not necessarily. This right to jury [...] Posted Feb 10 2008, 12:15 PM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog

• Fraudulent Crime Lab DUI Tests: Update

  My last post reported on the findings of a panel of Seattle judges which concluded that the state’s crime lab responsible for breath testing had routinely engaged in “fraudulent and scientifically unacceptable” practices that have compromised breath-test readings across Washington.  On February 2nd, a Seattle television station ran a more in-depth investigation, resulting in an interesting report on their news [...] Posted Feb 05 2008, 09:39 AM by DUI BLOG Filed under: Duiblog