Arizona DUI Defense Blog : Arizona DUI Lawyer & Attorney : Koplow & Patane Law Firm : Arizona DUI Defense

I ran across an excellent post discussing the source code issue.  That is, the fight between criminal defense attorneys and the maker of the breath tester (CMI) to disclose the code used in their breath testers.  CMI will not allow an inspection of the code.  Consequently, it cannot be checked for accuracy.  CMI essentially tells everyone charged with DUI to "just trust us."

Ed Brayton, a journalist and the co-founder of Michigan Citizens for Science, discusses the source code litigation in Florida.

Here's a very interesting case from Florida, where an appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that threw out evidence from a breathalyzer test in a drunk driving case because the manufacturer of the device refused to release the source code and allow defense experts to analyze the accuracy of the machines.

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It turns out my previous post showing Wonder Bread causing a false blood alcohol concentration reading was not an isolated incident.  The same forensic toxicologist and drug recognition expert did another Wonder Bread experiment.  Here it is:

 

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As demonstrated below, it appears that Wonder Bread is like Kryptonite to the Intoxilyzer 8000. While I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the test that occurred in this video, I have very little reason to doubt its veracity.  Especially since the manufacture of the Intoxilyzer 8000 (CMI) will not allow anyone (including the government) to inspect the source code used in this contraption.  Enjoy:

 

 

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Arizona law enforcement often uses breath-testing devices to determine the blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) of a person suspected of DUI.  The Intoxilyzer 8000 is commonly used in Maricopa County.  When a person is suspected of DUI, he is generally requested to blow twice into an Intoxilyzer; this is referred to as “duplicate breath testing.”

The Department of Public Safety (DPS) has issued regulations for duplicate breath testing, which it defines as “two consecutive breath tests that immediately follow a deprivation period, agree within 0.020…of each other...”

In addition, the Department of Public Safety defines a deprivation period as “at least a 15-minute period immediately prior to a duplicate breath test during which period the subject has not ingested any alcoholic beverage or other fluids, eaten, vomited, smoked or placed any foreign object in the mouth.”  Breath-testing experts have stated that the deprivation period is critical to the breath-testing process. (See Kurt Dubowski, “Quality Assurance in Breath-Alcohol Analysis,” Journal of Analytical Toxicology, Vol. 18, October 1994.)
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