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Judge Rules Defense Can Get DUI Machine Source Code
pfleming alerts us to developments in Arizona on a subject we have frequently discussed (e.g. FL, MN, NJ): efforts in DUI cases to obtain source code to devices that analyze blood alcohol levels. On Friday a Pima County Superior Court judge ruled that the software that powers the Intoxilyzer 8000 must be revealed to defense lawyers. "Defense attorneys representing more than 20 people arrested on felony DUI charges agreed to consolidate their cases into one and to argue it before [Judge] Bernini ... The source codes are crucial because the Intoxilyzer 8000 sometimes gives 'weird' or inexplicable results ... Six other states have been battling CMI [maker of the Intoxilyzer] over the source code — Minnesota, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Tennessee and New Jersey... CMI has currently racked up over $1.2 million in fines in a civil contempt order for not disclosing the source code in Florida."
I'm sorry, but if a company is making it impossible for DUI prosecutions to be done fairly, the company officers should be sitting in jail whilst we wait to find out if they can get the source code together or not.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
In court documents, Deputy Pima County Attorney Robin Schwartz said the defense attorneys' requests "bear all the hallmarks of a fishing expedition." Common sense shows that people rely on software and source-code information for everyday matters, Schwartz argued. One just looks at the results to know if something works or not. Schwartz used electricity as an example. "No one . . . needs to see a schematic of wiring to know that when he flips the switch on the wall, the light will come on," Schwartz said.
Um, that assumes that you are comparing the result with a known value. The point of a breathalyzer is to determine an unknown value.
Unless of course this attorney is saying that they already know the accused are drunk, in which case the breathalyzer is redundant.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I work as a law clerk in Minnesota, and while (being a clerk and all) I haven't "ordered" per se the source code be turned over, I've written many orders doing so -- until the Minnesota Supreme Court created a very high hurdle to getting it and no one has since requested. As stated by the attorney in the article, CMI won't turn the code over. Period. They simply will not obey court orders to do so. Minnesota is currently suing CMI in federal court, and we'll see how that turns out. But barring a federal court order, I assume they will simply continue to refuse to turn the code over. The result? Hundreds of DUIs being thrown out in Minnesota alone. Nice to see that the company cares more about their IP than the safety of our roads.
No, the witness is the police officer who administered the sobriety test. The machine is just one of the pieces of evidence that the officer uses to make an arrest.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I find your lack of closing parenthesis disturbing.
Clearly you have had no experience in the Lisp.
This has already happened with radar guns. If they are not calibrated frequently they will register a tree moving at twenty miles an hour.
That being said, in Florida, even if you are below the legal limit, you can still be charged with driving while impaired if it can be shown that your driving was impaired.
One of my closest friends is a Criminal Defense Attorney and he tells everyone he knows, "Don't drink a drop and drive". Also, you are within your legal rights in all fifty states to request a blood test instead of the breath test. You will be booked, but the results will be indisputable in court. So if you're sure you only drank one beer it will be dead on.
At some point, the suspects were caught, and the state needed to collect evidence of their BAC. Unfortunately, the state, instead of using a device that could provide accurate, verifiable evidence, used a device that, due to the lack of source code, could not provide verifiable evidence. Since the evidence is not verifiable, then the evidence is not admissible. Next time, the state should buy and use breathalyzers that produce admissible evidence.
While their action is despicable, the breathalyzer vendor didn't agree to provide their source code as part of the purchase, and shouldn't be forced to do so after the fact because the state didn't buy a device suitable for the task.
It's a bit like if I went to the state and offered to sell them a breathalyzer, and delivered a bicube blood alcohol measurement device, which is used by giving the two cubes to the suspect, having them throw the cubes on the ground, and then counting the number of dots that are showing on the top faces of the cubes. The state should know my breathalyzer isn't going to produce admissible evidence and shouldn't buy it and try and use the results in court.
Just like voting machines, states need to learn to stop spending millions of dollars on technology that doesn't work.
paintball
If the police officer relies on the reading from the device, then it is not really the police officer's judgment being presented, but just a re-iteration of what he read. Is the police officer able to testify about the accuracy of the device? Is the police officer able to testify about whether a device driver that reads values from an ADC register is doing so with the correct clock synchronization to ensure that does skew the time differential meaning of the results?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In NYC the police using their breathalyzers (might be a different model) could trigger an intoxicated reading just by keying their radios nearby. The needle would jump higher and they could use that to lock you away for hours until a much slower blood test refused to confirm the reading. It is well known that they used this "ability" to harass and lock away people who annoyed them with no justification. There are all kinds of "tricks" that can be played with these machines and the defense is right to be very leery of any "evidence" provided by them.
And I know Pima county well enough to know not to rely on what their attorneys say as the final word on anything.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'm Irish, you insensitive clod!
Seriously, though, people make a big fuss if you make fun of just about any ethnic group other than the Irish. But you can say all you want about the Irish and get away with it. Racists!