By Riley S. Lovejoy, Attorney at Law – If an officer arrests you for DUI and you agree to blow into the BAC machine, the machine will print out two copies of its reading. One for you, and one goes to the prosecutor. But what if the officer mistakenly gives you both copies? Believe it or not, a similar case has gone all the way to the Washington State Court of Appeals. In Mount Vernon v Mount Vernon Municipal Court 93 Wn.App. 501, (1998), Trooper Bosman explained: “The central processing unit of the computer while the test is being run stores that information in short-term memory. From the short-term memory it is sent to the printer. There is nothing else [that] can go to the printer except what is in the short-term memory and that can go at the time of the test or can be commanded to go at a later time [a]s a copy if no one else has run the instrument or shut it off or on. If you shut it off or on you empty that short-term memory. If you run another test you displace the information that was in there with the new test. There is no way you can manipulate the data that is in the short term memory.” Essentially, the police are given only one bite at the apple. In the hypothetical described earlier, the police can’t print out a new ticket if they’ve turned off the machine or run another test. So without a copy of the original ticket, the Prosecution will need to rely on other evidence to support their DUI charge.
For information on your Washington State DUI please contact our Snohomish County DUI attorneys, King County DUI attorneys, Island County DUI attorneys, or Skagit County DUI attorneys at 425-493-1115 or check out our website at http://www.washdui.com
No comments:
Post a Comment