Blood tests in drunk driving cases are often thought of as the “gold standard.” Some judges, prosecutors and even defense attorneys believe that blood tests are so accurate that DUI cases based on them are not defendable.
In Michigan the forensic scientists at the state lab have testified in numerous cases that every one of their several hundred thousand DUI blood tests have been spot-on, with no mistakes made ever.
This belief and these opinions expressed by Michigan law enforcement are not supported by a new finding that hundreds of DUI blood tests from a Colorado lab are faulty. As a result more than a thousand blood tests are being redone.
Agilent 6850 Series II GC System
According to the Associated Press reporter P. Solomon Banda, the errors were discovered through the labs own quality assurance program. This leaves open the question of whether such self-checks are sufficient to protect the public from the possibility of wrongful conviction of drunk driving.
The tests were performed using head space gas chromatography on an instrument manufactured by Agilent Technologies. The article suggests that this instrument has been ruled out as a cause, which leaves human error or contamination.
According to Sandy Mullins, the executive director of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, “we take a lot of these tests as fact, when in fact these are being administered by people and systems. Just like any system they can be faulty. Of greatest concern is where people couldn’t afford to challenge the test and pleaded guilty.”
Furthermore, in a typical drunk driving case, the client is saying “I know I was not drunk but the machine says I was and the machine doesn’t lie. Well, this proves that tests sometimes do lie.”
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