This month Scott County Judge, Jerome Abrams, ruled that the controversial Intoxilyzer 5000 breath testing machine is reliable in Minnesota DWI cases.
The Intoxilyzer 5000 has long been the standard breath test machine used by the state for testing driver’s blood alcohol content (BAC). A coalition of Minnesota criminal defense lawyers began a legal battle about five years ago, claiming that inaccuracies in the machine’s source code made its results unreliable and inadmissible in drunk driving cases. Now that the machine has been ruled reliable, 4,000 Minnesota DWI cases that were pending the ruling of the machine’s accuracy will now proceed in court.
Although Abrams did not shy away from criticizing the Intoxilyzer, calling it “severely challenged” and “at the edge of its usefulness,” his final ruling indicated the machine was accurate. In Abrams’s 122-page ruling, he stated the machine’s source code does have errors, but they “do not materially impair accuracy, validity, or reliability of the results.”
While some Minnesota criminal defense attorneys advocated this defense for prospective clients, there were others who thought the litigation war was foolhardy from the start.
“The machine has been in operation for years and has continued to be proven accurate when compared to other BAC tests,” says DWI Lawyer, Avery Appelman. “This litigation is the product of defense lawyers claiming to do the greater good when, in reality, all they achieved was a hollow victory.”
Criminal Defense Attorney Avery Appelman commented, “I refuse to sell my clients rainbows and unicorns. Thousands of people now have to go back to court and pay more fees for something that could’ve been dealt with five years ago if this litigation hadn’t occurred.”
Although the machine has been approved for DWI cases currently on hold, the state had already begun phasing out the machine and replacing it with the more accurate Datamaster DMT breath test machine.
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