Has anyone had any luck is discredditing the breathalyzer in drunk driving cases? It seems to me that the police claim this machine never makes a mistake? Any thoughts?

The breathalyzer machine is not 100% accurate. They're supposed to perform regular maintenance on it and keep a log documenting such maintenance. They often either forget to do the maintenance, or forget to fill out the log. Make them produce that log in court. Ask about the calibration for the Breathalyzer machine itself, the testing log for the breathalyzer and the operator's certification. The machine should be calibrated once a week, if i remember correctly.

Supposedly, if the breath contains alcohol, it reacts with the chemicals to create a result. But ask if things other than alcohol cause this reaction. Ask if the officer is familiar with how long it takes the body to absorb the alcohol (anywhere from 5 minutes to 4 hours). Ask for any notes relating to the administration of the test.


Then ask technical questions about how the test was administered. Go throught the manual itself and make sure they didn't miss a step.

There are few experts on this but, each state has a contract with a company that produces these things, there are two or three. Each state determines if they want a feature which is basically a long-term memory of all the breath tests taken. A state, and many do, opt not to have this memory, meaning it is basically impossible to test the long term functionability of the machine. Without this core, you are limited to the immediate test and cannot sample it against others. You are left with calibration records, but are not able to tell if an error occurred between calibrations. The prosecution experts somehow claim their machine is 100% accurate. If you can beleive that. its all a scam. There is no such thing as a 100% accurate machine. I have played with this argument before.

The states that do not participate in the memory "dump" portion of the machine make it almost impossible to test the credibility of the machine. It would seem you could use that to make the machine results inadmissible, but this drunk driving stuff is such a sensitive issue these days that no judge is willing to be the one that let a potential drunk driver off the hook. Does not seem fair.

how do you find out if any given state maintains this core memory or not?

You can call the state police and they will tell you, or if you get a client ask for the information, model number and components of the machine and they have to disclose it to you.