The prosecutor responsible for pursuing your arrest will rely heavily upon the results of your breath alcohol test.
Therefore, your attorney must aggressively attack the results of that test. If there are flaws with the breath-testing machine or in the procedure for giving the test, the test results may not be used against you in court, despite how much or how little you drank. Since the breath testing device is a sophisticated machine, it is a great place to find errors in the arrest process to help you in court.
There are many sources of error an attorney should explore to attack the credibility of the testing device and the results it has provided. First, the fingers and hands of the officer giving you the breath test should be clean to ensure there are no foreign substances that could make their way into the breath testing mouth piece or machine itself. If the officer smoked, handled paint, or other solvents before arresting you and giving you the test, these foreign substances could create an error in the results, and even possibly create a higher blood alcohol result.
It is very important to determine if other forms of alcohol were present during the testing procedure that the machine may mistake for the alcohol you drank. The machine the officer asked you to blow into is detecting ethyl alcohol – the type of alcohol found in beverages. However, there are other forms of alcohol that confuses the breath test machine into thinking you may have consumed more alcohol than you actually did. Because the breath test device is searching for ethyl-alcohol in your breath, your attorney may argue that the method of measuring your blood alcohol is inaccurate, since it cannot be determined if other forms of ethyl-alcohol were present. If you were near paint, gas fumes, nail polish, and inhaled or consumed any of these things, the measurement of blood alcohol in your system by the machine may not reflect the beverage alcohol you consumed. The same issue will arise if these foreign substances are on your hands or mouth when you are offered the test, and those substances find their way into the air chamber that is measuring the blood alcohol level. If your attorney can show that a major error in the test-taking procedure occurred, the blood alcohol results in your case may not be allowable against you in court. If that occurs, you have poked a major hole in the prosecutor’s case that may put you in the driver’s seat when your court appearance arrives.
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Being charged with a DUI in Michigan can be traumatizing. Attorney Joseph Awad’s expertise in OWI and DUI defense is matched by a keen awareness of the emotional stress that good people feel when put in a bad position.
