Breath Testing Obsolete?

This week my wife and I spent the week in Vegas at the National College of DUI Defense 13th Annual DWI Seminar. Experts and the best lawyers from around the country attended and lectured. I found it very helpful to pull out the most relevant parts that apply to my upcoming trials.

What I found most interesting is that the majority of the experts in the field of breath testing are agreeing with me that blood testing will eclipse almost all forms of breath testing within the next 5 years.

There are some interesting developments that combine the fields of breath and blood testing, but the calibration for the individual person is where the problem lies for this methodology. I am referring to combining the two methods of alcohol testing into one device.

Not surprisingly, there are problems in calibrating the breath alcohol to correspond to the blood alcohol on any machine that uses both. The reason is that you can give 100 tests to the same person and get 100 different numerical responses on a breath test machine. This is a machine that can have a 40% error rate and still be considered accurate and reliable!

Even a blood test has some margin of error, even assuming that the entire blood draw process was done perfectly.

The experts that I met and spoke with this week, all agree that some big changes are coming in the next few years and that the top attorneys must know how to try a blood case and understand the science and the limitations of the testing methodology. In Texas, we have seen the increased use of the "blood warrants" to forcefully take a person's blood if they refuse a breath test.

Does anyone think that it will stop in the near future?

If you have been arrested for DWI and provided a sample of blood, breath or even refused all testing, you must have a top notch attorney that knows and understand the science of breath, blood and is certified in the coordination exercises used by police to gather evidence of presumed intoxication.