Double Talk Needed To Justify The Intoxilyzer Upgrade In Georgia

The Henry County Georgia Police announced the replacement of their Intoxilyzer 5000 machines with the new Intoxilyzer 9000.  Throughout Georgia, all Intoxilyzer 5000 machines are being replaced with the Intoxilyzer 9000.  The explanation for the “upgrade” is comical.

The problem with the switch to a new machine is that it calls into question convictions based on the ancient technology currently used in Georgia.  Georgia has now approved the Intoxilyzer 9000 after using the Intox. 5000 since 1994.

Georgia skipped upgrading the technology for 20 years because the people at our crime lab just do not care whether someone is guilty.  It is as simple as that.  Now, with spare parts from the Atari-age technology in short supply, Georgia is now forced to buy new machines.

As reported in the Henry Daily Herald, Police Spokesperson have been quoted as saying: “Although functional and scientifically reliable, the Intoxilyzer 5000 does not have all the attributes necessary to meet evolving legal requests and quality assurance recommendations in the field of breath alcohol testing….Also, the 5000 models are not configured with the capability to schedule quality control checks at the frequency recommended by a growing number of experts in the forensic community”

Let me translate; the technology we have used is out of date and unreliable, yet now we have to replace it because we cannot find the sticks and stones needed to repair the device.  We have been convicting people in Georgia with a breath-testing machine designed before the Internet, before email, and before we had the ability to "have quality assurances" such as the "quality control checks" to prove the reliability ‘pesky' Georgia DUI Lawyers require.

This is the typical reasoning we see from government.  It makes me think about the West Memphis Three case where the absolute innocence of the accused was obvious to everyone, yet government actors and their accomplish Judge David Burnett did not care enough to admit that they made a mistake.  Even in the face of DNA evidence showing actual innocence, Judge David Burnett refused to consider that the West Memphis Three were innocent.  Judge Burnett was later quoted as saying that he had been ‘messing with this case for 18 years…and that there was no reason to believe the state could convict someone innocent.'  Wow; the State could not possibly convict the innocent?  Hundreds of innocent people have been freed because of the Innocence Project and DNA testing.

Let me be crystal clear, our crime lab does not care if a person is guilty of any crime.  The crime lab is an arm of the prosecution, and as a result, any witness that testifies does so as an advocate, not as a scientist.  I have witnessed excuses for delays in testing blood and urine samples, excuses for breaks in the chain of custody, and the utter lack of intellectual honesty in DUI Marijuana cases.

In fact, in DUI Marijuana cases our Georgia Crime Lab “scientists” have testified that people are impaired or have recently consumed marijuana based on evidence of inactive marijuana metabolites in a person's blood.  There is no scientific basis to say that an inactive metabolite can correlate to impairment.

The moral of this story is to at least consider that a person may not be guilty when charged with a crime.  People are presumed innocent for a reason.  If you have been charged with DUI in Henry County, call the Henry County DUI Lawyers in our office.