Fascinating (and troubling) look at how blood-alcohol breath machines work.

Given the stakes, and the machines’ penchant for error, it’s remarkable that the machines are admitted as evidence at all. But they’re not only admitted as evidence, they’re taken as de facto evidence of a defendant’s guilt, and efforts to cross-examine their methodology, reliability, and margin of error are generally laughed out of the court room.

The good news is that at least a few judges are finally showing some respect for the presumption of innocence.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 16th, 2006 at 1:57 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Alcohol, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.