Seattle DUI Attorney | Breath Test Uncertainty
If you are a DUI attorney in Seattle right now, you know that breath test certainty is one of the hottest issues out there. Even if you aren’t a Seattle DUI attorney, you know that if you are stopped and arrested for DUI that you are going to be asked to take a breath alcohol test and that the outcome of that test is going to have a large impact on your future. .08 or higher and you are suddenly fighting a very uphill battle.
In Seattle, and more specifically King County, though, for the last two years or so there has been some relief from the burden that is fighting a breath test result. Some very find DUI defense attorneys were able to show a panel of judges how and why the breath test results that were being accepted by the courts every day were simply not scientifically reliable. A large portion of this unreliability is couched in something called a level of uncertainty.
You see, even in science, there is rarely something that is 100% certain. Everything has an error rate, or level of uncertainty attached to it, particularly when you are talking about measuring something. For example, if you measure a cup of water, it is likely that even if you hit the exact line on the measuring cup that you have one cup of water. There is likely an error rate of plus or minus some number that has been scientifically researched and is known and factored in when using the measuring cup.
But no such error has ever been scientifically calculated for every part of a breath test. This is what is so frustrating to Seattle DUI lawyers out there. We know there is error associated with every part of a scientific test, but we don’t know what it is because no one has ever checked it, and the prosecution still attempts to pass it off as scientifically reliable evidence.
At least one court has recognized the problem, and hopefully others will too. Stay tuned for more information about breath tests and their reliability.
