Legal Topics

Criminal Law — Driving Under Influence — Evidence — Breath Test — Substantial Compliance With Administrative Rules

Apr 11th, 2020 in News by admin

Criminal law — Driving under influence — Evidence — Breath test — Substantial compliance with administrative rules — Motion to suppress breath test results is denied where defense…

…provided no evidence to support claim that failure of Florida Department of Law Enforcement to test deionized water prior to introducing water into Intoxilyzer through controlled blanks and relying on testing through blanks for detection of impurities and contaminants in water resulted in scientifically unreliable and inaccurate breath test results — Experts testified that they found no evidence of contamination in records and failed to correlate any irregularity or “spikes” with reliability or accuracy of test results — No merit to argument that section 2.14 of Alcohol Testing Program procedures manual is invalid unadopted rule and lacks sufficient requirements to ensure reliable scientific evidence — Section 2.14 is not a rule as contemplated by Administrative Procedures Act, and alleged flaws concern matters that are fundamental to process and always done without necessity of superfluous rule