DWI Breath Test: Lab errors may have caused hundreds of wrongful convictions in Washington by Collin County DWI lawyer Troy Burleson
by Collin, Dallas and Denton County DWI Attorney Troy Burleson
As I have reported before, the number two cause of wrongful convictions is lab error and junk science. According to a recent report from Washington State, a court has ruled that the State will not be able to use breath test results in hundreds of pending DUI cases. Additionally, thousand of people in Washington who were convicted of DUI now may be able to appeal their convictions because of this ruling.
The court’s ruling was predicated on multiple problems that begin to surface recently in the state’s toxicology lab that is in charge of the maintenance, upkeep, calibration and certification of the state’s breath testing equipment. According to the report, problems began last summer when the lab manager, Anne Marie Gordon, was accused of “signing off on scientific test that she did not actually perform.”
This report physically makes me sick. The most powerful evidence the state has in any DWI/DUI case is a breath test. To think that the people entrusted to test and maintain these machines, and that hundreds of people may have been wrongfully convicted based on these failures, is simply appalling.
In addition to Ms. Gordon fraudulently certifying scientific tests, the Washington court found the following problems:
• data was misreported
• solutions were improperly mixed
• scientists were signing off on other people’s work
• ethanol-water solutions (used by the machines to test a person alcohol concentration) were not tested properly
• no toxicologist ever tested the computer to make sure the calculations (breath test results) were valid
• Other “flaws” were not listed in the report.
I hope that other states take notice of this serious problem. Defense attorneys have argued for years that these breath machines are not scientifically valid even if they were properly maintained, tested and calibrated. Now, add the fact that the people in charge of doing the diagnostics on the machines are completely neglecting their duties. I strongly believe that the Washington case is just the first on many similar cases.
