Broward DUI Lawyer Blog

The battle rages forward on Florida's west coast, where defense lawyers continue poking holes into the usefulness of the state's breathalyzer machine used in Fort Lauderdale DUI cases.

Now news coming out of Sarasota shows that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is so desperate to prove their breathalyzer machine works that they spent $8,000 to get their employees drunk to test the machines. But the unscientific study has yet to sway judges that the machine actually works.

Our Fort Lauderdale DUI defense lawyers believe this shows how desperate the state's law enforcement agency is to get these poorly working breath machines to be accepted by courts statewide. The battle has been especially intense in Sarasota, where judges and prosecutors have tossed out breath test results after studies have shown they were unreliable.

Real testing by experts showed that the machines, when properly examined, showed that drivers could blow 12 liters of breath in the machine, though the human lung capacity maxes out at around 5 liters. That shows the test results are impossible, which brings into question the blood-alcohol level results for thousands of drivers who have been charged with DUI there.

And that means that drivers throughout South Florida should be skeptical of these machines. They are designed to reflect the blood-alcohol level of the driver who is stopped by police. But, as some have pointed out, these machines can't measure the blood-alcohol level, but only can estimate what it is. Without a sample of blood, a person's breath can't be accurate anyway.

In Florida, FDLE regulates the use of breath machines for officers and has only certified one -- the Intoxilyzer 8000 -- as useable by police. And because of the questionable results, attorneys statewide have been fighting their accuracy on behalf of DUI defendants. The company that makes the device has been fighting judge's orders that allow DUI defense lawyers to see how they work, claiming it would leak their trade secrets to the public.

According to the Herald-Tribune, FDLE spent $330 on whiskey, other booze, mixers and snacks in order to have their employees get blitzed and blow into the machines. There blood was also drawn to compare to the breath test results. The study, overall, cost $8,000.

In October, the newspaper reported that flawed machines were staying in operation for years without checkups or maintenance -- dishing out impossible results all the while. In about 100 cases, DUI defendants had those breath test results tossed out, leading to dropped or reduced charges. But for hundreds or even thousands more, they can't know whether the tests in their previous case would have changed if this information was known ahead of time.

Judges seemed skeptical of using the information, in part because the lab work wasn't done. Some DUI defense lawyers, the newspaper reported, argued that there was nothing scientific about the study and it doesn't address the problems.