DUI BLOG

When the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision validated DUI "sobriety checkpoints" (aka police roadblocks), Chief Justice Rehnquist admitted that they were a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.   However, he wrote in Michigan v. Sitz, the "minimal intrusion" into citizens’ protected right to privacy was "outweighed" by the government’s interest in reducing DUI-caused fatalities.

Although the decision limited the use of roadblocks to apprehension of drunk drivers, it was not difficult to foresee that police would soon go beyond this.  And, in fact, there has been a growing increase in the use of roadblocks for purposes other than DUI detection.  See, for example, my earlier posts Sobriety Checkpoints: The Slippery Slope and The Slow Death of the Fourth Amendment.  Or just look around you….

Police Checkpoint Seeks Illegal Guns

Mt. Vernon, NY.  Sept. 28  -  Drivers entering the city from the Bronx via First Avenue last night encountered the first police checkpoint searching for illegal guns.

Amid flashing lights and flares in the roadway, more than a dozen officers were pulling over every third car to ask for permission to search for guns and check for other crimes such as drunken driving.

Hmmm…..Roadblocks to check for guns "and other crimes" — in other words, stopping you on the highways without probable cause to see if you’re doing anything wrong or have anything illegal in the car.  So much for the Fourth Amendment. 

But then, you don’t have to give the police your "permission to search", right?  Wrong.  Does anyone seriously believe that if you refused permission, you would be sent merrily on your way?

(Thanks to David O’Shea.)

I’ve commented repeatedly in the past about the inaccuracy and unreliability of breath-testing devices used in DUI investigations. This is due to a wide range of factors, including inherent design defects (see, for example, my previous post “Why Breathalyzers Don’t Measure Alcohol”); ineffective calibration and maintenance of the machines; improper administration of the test; radio frequncy interference; and, most importantly, physiological variability in humans.

The main problem with breath machines is that they are designed to assume all human beings are the same (see “Convicting the ‘Average’ DUI Suspect”). In fact, we are all very different from one another in ways that are critical to such testing — and we are ourselves physiologically different from one moment to the next.

Each of us, for example, is inherently different in our partition ratio — the ratio of alcohol in our breath compared to alcohol in our blood — and this ratio differs within ourselves from hour to hour (see “Breathalyzers — and Why They Don’t Work”). This is critical, as the breathalyzer will automatically compute the amount of alcohol in the blood based upon the measured alcohol on the breath — using a uniform ratio that (falsely) assumes we are all the same. Another human variable is the existence of such conditions as diabetes (see “Diabetes and the Counterfeit DUI”), acid reflux (“GERD, Acid Reflux and False Breathalyzer Results”)…. and anemia.

A person suffering from anemia has a low red blood cell count, perhaps half as much as would be normal. Put simply, when there are fewer red blood cells, the body will increase the amount of plasma to fill the void. Red and white blood cells are solid; plasma is liquid. Alcohol is attracted to liquid in the body, not muscle, bone, or other solids. It follows that the higher the ratio of liquid to solids in the blood (called the hematocrit), the higher the amount of alcohol in the blood — and the higher will be the reading on the breathalyzer.

The male-female average hematocrit is 45% (men average 47%, women 42%), but the range varies for men from 42 to 52%, and for woman from 37 to 47%. The machine, of course, assumes that all suspects have a hematocrit of 45%. The effect of an individual’s hematocrit on breath analysis can be mathematically computed. The partition ratio of alcohol in blood to alcohol in breath uniformly used in breath testing is 2100:1. If the suspect’s hematocrit is, say, 54%, the breath test result could be computed by multiplying it by 45/54. Assuming a breath test result of .09%, for example, the true blood-alcohol concentration could be determined by the formula .11 x 45/54 = .07%.

In other words, a person with a true BAC of .07% but a hematocrit of 54% would test on an otherwise “accurate” machine as .09%.  The machine "proves" the innocent citizen guilty - just because he or she is anemic (or simply varies from the statistical norm).

If you are arrested for DUI and a breath test shows a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08% or higher, you are guilty. It does not matter, of course, whether you are a man or a women: the laws do not discriminate. Maybe they should…

Researchers at the University School of Medicine in Trieste, Italy, found that the stomach lining contains an enzyme called gastric alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol, and that women have less than men. To determine the relative effects of the enzyme, they gave alcohol both orally and intravenously to groups of alcoholic and non-alcoholic men and women. They found that women reached the same levels of blood alcohol as men after drinking only half as much; with weight differences taken into account, they found that women reached BAC levels illegal in a DUI case after drinking 20 to 30 percent less alcohol than men.

The scientists’ conclusion: legislatures may need to consider sex differences in drunk driving laws when defining safe levels of drinking for driving motor vehicles. Frezza and Lieber, “High Blood Alcohol Levels in Women: The Role of Decreased Gastric Alcohol Dehydrogenase Activity and First-Pass Metabolism”, 322(2) New England Journal of Medicine 95 (1990).

Yet another study has found that women have lower “partition ratios” of blood to breath. What kind of ratios? Well, all breath machines in DUI cases measure the amount of alcohol in a person’s breath. But the what we really want to know is the amount of alcohol in the person’s blood. So how do we get that? Simple: a small computer in the Breathalyzer multiplies the amount of alcohol it detects in the breath sample by 2100 times. This is based upon the theory that, on average, there are 2100 units of alcohol in the blood for every unit of alcohol in the breath. (Note: that’s an average — but it varies from person to person.)

According to the study, women have a significantly lower partition ratio. Jones, “Determination of Liquid/Air Partition Coefficients for Dilute Solutions of Ethanol in Water, Whole Blood and Plasma”, Analytical Toxicology 193 (July/August 1983). And the lower the ratio, the higher the reading — even though the true BAC does not vary. Example: a woman with a true BAC of .06% and a ratio of 1500:1 (rather than the presumed 2100:1) will get a reading on the machine of .09% — above the legal limit. Put another way, the breath machine will show an average man accused of drunk driving to be innocent — but a woman with the same blood alcohol level to be guilty.

And then there’s the problem of birth control….

Scientists in Canada have found that “women taking oral contraceptive steroids (O.C.S.) appeared to eliminate ethanol significantly faster than women not taking O.C.S.” Papple, “The Effects of Oral Contraceptive Steroids on the Rate of Post-Absorptive Phase Decline of Blood Alcohol Concentration in the Adult Woman, 15(1) Canadian Society of Forensic Science Journal 17 (1982). That means that women will reach peak BAC faster, and return to lower levels more quickly. This, of course, can create serious problems in a DUI case when attempting to estimate BAC at the time of driving based upon a breath test administered one hour later.

Making the problem worse, researchers have also discovered that women who were taking birth control pills or who were pregnant had higher levels of acetaldehyde on their breath, due to the decreased ability to metabolize the enzyme as the level of sex steroids increases. So what? Well, most breath machines use infrared analysis in measuring the breath sample of a DUI suspect. But these machines don’t really measure alcohol, rather they measure any compound which contains the “methyl group” in its molecular structure. And acetaldehyde is one of these compounds. Result: a higher “blood alcohol” reading on the Breathalyzer. Jeavons and Zeiner, “Effects of Elevated Female Sex Steroids on Ethanol and Acetaldehyde Metabolism in Humans”, 8(4) Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 352 (1984).

It’s always a problem when the law, in its infinite wisdom, assumes that all of us are exactly the same.

Now if MADD were truly interested in saving lives on our highways rather than in eradicating the “evils of alcohol”…

Study: Texting More Dangerous Than DUI 

 LONDON, Sept. 19 (UPI) — Young drivers who send text messages while operating a motor vehicle are at more risk than those who drive drunk, a British study released Thursday finds.

The study was carried out by a research group TRL for the Royal Automobile Club Foundation. TRL used an automobile simulator to compare the effect of texting on reaction time and other measures of driving ability to those of cell-phone use, drinking and drug use.

An engineer involved in a deadly crash between a Los Angeles commuter train and a freight train is believed to have been sending text messages while operating the train, officials said. He was one of 25 people killed in the collision.

"The participants in this study were almost unanimous in their view that drunk driving was the most dangerous action on the road," said Stephen Glaister, head of the RAC Foundation. "Yet this research clearly shows that a motorist who is texting is significantly more impaired than a motorist at the legal limit for alcohol."

For many years now I’ve written and lectured extensively on drunk driving litigation – on the science of blood and breath alcohol analysis, the flaws in breathalyzers, the ineffectiveness of field sobriety testing. In recent years, however, my focus has increasingly shifted to the gradual erosion of constitutional rights in DUI cases.

So who cares about drunk drivers and their constitutional rights?

You should care. The importance of what is happening in DUI law and procedures can be summarized in one word: precedent.

We are a nation of laws, more specifically, the common law inherited from the British legal system. Unlike most nations, which use some version of the French civil law where laws are found in codes, we look to the precedent of judicial decisions interpreting statutory law. When a court looks at the facts in a specific case, it applies not only statutes but decisions in appellate court cases to determine what the law is. The genius of this common law system of precedent is its flexibility; its flaw is what many call “judicial legislation”.

The flaw becomes particularly noticeable when dealing with politically unpopular subjects. And few topics are as politically “incorrect” as drunk driving. Judges are, after all, politically sensitive animals who want to be reelected. Put another way, it is very easy to rule in favor of the prosecution in DUI cases — particularly when powerful pressure groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (annual revenues of over $47 million) are so vocal in elections and in legislatures. There are few advocates for the accused or the Constitution during election campaigns.

This judicial attitude is not limited to judges considering re-election. A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has been consistent in depriving the accused in DUI cases their constitutional rights. To mention a few examples:

Michigan v. Sitz. The Court held that sobriety roadblocks were permissible — despite the fact that there is no exception in the Fourth Amendment for stopping citizens without reasonable suspicion.

South Dakota v. Neville. The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination was held inapplicable in drunk driving cases (refusing to submit to testing).

Blanton v. North Las Vegas. Even though punishable by six months in jail, fines and diver’s license suspension, there is no Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial in a drunk driving case.

California v. Trombetta. Although police normally have to save evidence, they do not have to save breath samples in DUI cases (even though it is easy and inexpensive to do so).

So…we have seen a steady flow of appellate decisions at all levels taking away the constitutional rights of those accused of DUI. Again, so what?

Again, precedent: What happens today to a citizen accused of DUI can happen tommorrow to a person accused of any other crime.  If police can set up roadblocks to check everyone for intoxication, they can set them up to search for drugs (which, incidentally, has already happened). If a citizen accused of DUI has no right to a jury of his peers, then the precedent exists to deny the right to citizens accused of tax evasion or any other offense.

The danger of precedent in the DUI field is not limited to judicial decisions. Legislatures are also guilty of passing unfair and/or unconstitutional — but politically popular — statutes. We have certainly seen a seemingly unending series of unfair and unconsitutional statutes across the country in recent years: immediate license suspensions at the police station; double jeopardy/punishment (license suspension and criminal prosecution); so-called per se laws (.08% blood-alcohol is illegal, even if sober); presumption of guilt (if .08%, presumed to be under the influence; if .08% when tested, presumed to be .08% when driving); ad nauseum. And having passed such laws relating to DUI, they are less reluctant to do so in other areas as well. 

So who cares about DUI?  To paraphrase, “First they came for the drunks, but I was not a drunk so I did not speak up…..”

As I’ve written in past posts (Secret Breathalyzer Software Still Secret), defense attorneys have repeatedly tried to gain access to the secret software used to run the various models of breath-testing machines.  As the geeks say, "garbage in, garbage out":  erroneous or badly written software will result in erroneous test results — and thousands of citizens wrongfully convicted of DUI.  Yet, manufacturers have refused to turn the software code over, claiming "trade secrets".  The real reason: neither they, the police nor the prosecution want the loss of public confidence that would result from disclosure of inaccurate and unreliable software.

Bottom line:  Profits trump justice.

This wall of silence was breached some time ago when the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the manufacturers of the AlcoTest 7110 to turn over the source code.   See Secret Breathalyzer Software Finally Revealed.  That code was analyzed by a software laboratory.  To no one’s great surprise, the laboratory found the software to consist of no "trade secrets", but rather of non-proprietary and very primitive and defective code.  As the experts concluded in their report:

The program presented shows ample evidence of incomplete design, incomplete verification of design, and incomplete “white box” and “black box” testing. Therefore the software has to be considered unreliable and untested, and in several cases it does not meet stated requirements. The planning and documentation of the design is haphazard. Sections of the original code and modified code show evidence of using an experimental approach to coding, or use what is best described as the “trial and error” method. Several sections are marked as “temporary, for now”. Other sections were added to existing modules or inserted in a code stream, leading to a patchwork design and coding style…

It is clear that, as submitted, the Alcotest software would not pass development standards and testing for the U.S. Government or Military. It would fail software standards for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as commercial standards used in devices for public safety…If the FAA imposed mandatory alcohol testing for all commercial pilots, the Alcotest would be rejected based upon the FAA safety and software standards…

 
Despite this beacon of light in the judicial darkness, the courts of other states continue to ignore the pleas of the accused to confront their accusers.  Remember:  in the courts of most states, a citizen is rebuttably presumed by law to be guilty if one of these machines reads .08% or higher.  See my post Whatever Happened to the Presumption of Innocence?  But cracks are appearing in the wall of silence.  Courts in Florida, for example have ordered the source code turned over to the defense – a court order the manufacturers have refused to follow.

Yesterday, an Arizona court ordered the manufacturers of another breath-testing device, CMI Corporation’s Intoxilyzer 8000, to turn over the software code to the defense.
 

Lawyers Win Access to DUI-Test Software

Defense wants to test if Intoxilyzer is accurate

Can alcohol be created by the human body itself — without any drinking? Apparently so.

In an interesting scientific article, two physicians at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore reported that they detected the odor of beer in three of their patients. This was in an isolated hospital setting; there was no access to alcoholic beverages. The doctors had urine samples taken and analyzed by gas chromatography. Result? All three showed the presence of alcohol in their systems. Two of these were then tested for actual blood-alcohol concentration (BAC). One showed a BAC of .043%. The other was .121% — or 1 1/2 times the legal limit for DUI!

The presence of alcohol in human specimens containing glucose and yeast should come as no surprise.  Several have made this observation. Under normal circumstances trace amounts of alcohol may be found in the blood; the alcohol is then channeled into an energy pathway by hepatic alcohol dehydrogenase…

The two physicians continued:

The Japanese report the auto brewery syndrome in which they have seen middle aged patients with bowel abnormalities, most often after surgery, who have yeast overgrowth, usually candida, in the G.I. tract and who ferment ingested carbohydrates, producing enough alcohol to result in drunkeness.” Mullholland and Townsend, “Bladder Beer – A New Clinical Observation”,  95 Transactions of the American Clinical Climatological Association 34 (1983).

In other words, the body is manufacturing alcohol by itself — in some cases, enough to become legally intoxicated.   This has been confirmed by other studies. Swedish researchers, for example, have found that:

Increasing evidence has emerged to show that endogenous ethanol does exist, the the concentrations seen have large inter-individual variations. Our results show a markedly skewed distribution of values…The reason for the wide inter-individuaal variation in healthy abstaining individuals is hard to explain.” Jones et al., “Determination of Endogenous Ethanol in Blood and Breath By Gas Chromatography”, 18 Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior 267 (1983).

How many folks with “immaculately conceived” alcohol in their systems have been arrested and convicted for DUI? These people were innocent, right?

Wrong. In the rush to convict drunk drivers (and with increasing federal coercion), all states have now passed so-called per se laws: driving with a BAC of .08% or more. Neither intent, negligence or even knowledge is required. The crime consists of simply having the alcohol in your body.

Even if you’ve had nothing to drink.

An increasing number of police officers are using pre-written arrest reports in drunk driving cases. In other words, they are writing out a batch of phony reports — including driving symptoms, slurred speech, failed field sobriety tests, admissions of drinking — and then just filling in the names, dates, etc., when they actually make an arrest. 

Saves a lot of time. In this computer age, however, this practice is commonly abbreviated even further by using computer templates: word processing forms which have all of the “facts” already entered, with blanks to fill in for name, date, etc.   Following is an example of this time-saving approach to DUI law enforcement:

DUI Suspects May Go Free Due to Questionable Arrest Reports

Orlando, FL  November 16 — Channel 9 Investigates has uncovered dozens of DUI suspects that may go free because sheriff’s deputies appear to be using pre-written arrest reports.

There are some experts who believe this may even amount to perjury. When a deputy makes a DUI bust, the officer writes an arrest report. It’s the official record of what the deputy says happened. But Eyewitness News has uncovered dozens of Orange County DUI arrest reports that apparently have come from pre-written templates.

One report, for instance, says the suspect “stumbled slightly when walking and swayed moderately … with a three inch to five inch orbital rotation/sway.” At least ten reports, written by the same deputy over a six-month period, use the exact same phrase. Even reports written by other deputies contain that exact phrase.

In many reports, the deputy noticed the “strong odor of an alcoholic beverage within my interior cab.” That exact phrase appears in report after report. And it’s there whether the suspect’s blood alcohol content was anywhere from .03 to .16.  9 Investigates found 11 other reports, written by a different deputy, that use those exact words, again, no matter how much the suspect had to drink.

“It just doesn’t smell right,” said DUI defense attorney Stu Hyman. “It’s a sad state of affairs when somebody hasn’t even committed the offense yet, but the report has already been written.”

9 Investigates found one deputy whose suspects always do an “orbital rotation” and always “counter-clockwise.” Five deputies always leave their suspects in the car for exactly five minutes before smelling alcohol. In one case, a suspect was described as “he/she.”

It all leads Hyman to believe the reports were pre-written.

“Why is it that everyone is swaying three to five inches? Why isn’t it two to eight? Why not one to seven inches?” questioned Hyman….

9 Investigates found court testimony where a deputy indicated the sheriff’s office has computer DUI templates. The deputy testified, “I’ve been told people use them. I just choose not to.”

None of this comes as any surprise to experienced DUI attorneys, who are used to seeing what I have called in my book and lectures “xeroxed symptoms”. This has been going on for a long time. (Years ago, I used to get a court order for copies of an arresting officer’s DUI reports for the previous 30 days; when the reports became an embarrassment, the Orange County (California) D.A.’s office finally appealed and stopped the judges from issuing the orders — but never prosecuted a single officer for perjury or filing a false report.)