We’ve seen it before, human error causing people to be charged with crimes they didn’t commit. In this case being falsely charged with DUI.
The guaranteed response from the lab is “there is nothing wrong with the science”. The problem is that science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The humans involved always has an effect on the scientific results. It’s all related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
We saw another human error inflate blood alcohol results in Colorado not too long ago, leading to false convictions. This is why it’s important to always hire an experienced DUI attorney, and have a qualified expert review your case materials.
Lab scientists’ mathematical errors at the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office Tri-County Regional Crime Lab resulted in inflated blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels in 111 driving-while-impaired cases in the three counties the lab services.
The regional crime lab, which started analyzing urine samples in DWI cases Jan. 1, services Anoka, Sherburne and Wright counties.
According to Lt. Paul Sommer, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, the error was mathematical and applied only to urine samples, not the blood tests.
According to Sommer, lab scientists are supposed to multiply the end result by 0.67 to determine the grams of alcohol per 67 milliliters of urine. The multiplication was not done, so the end result reported the grams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of urine, therefore inflating the results.
“The science was not bad. Nothing was tainted. It was a human error,” Sommer said.
Read much more on StarNews.com.
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