Teen blames kiss for her drunken driving arrest

[rat­ings]
Original arti­cle here:

At first glance I thought this was a lame excuse for under­age drink­ing and dri­ving. But then I read fur­ther and saw that the alco­hol was mea­sured by using a portable breath tester. These devices usu­ally use a fuel cell sys­tem and have no pro­vi­sion for detect­ing “mouth alco­hol” (via a slope detec­tor). That being said it’s entirely pos­si­ble, depend­ing on how long after her last kiss she was tested that she could have actu­ally ingested no alco­hol, and the read­ing obtained was entirely from kiss some­one who was drinking.

This is just ONE of the prob­lems when police use portable breath testers on juve­niles. The state usu­ally argues (suc­cess­fully) that a portable breath tester that usu­ally isn’t admis­si­ble in court, can be admis­si­ble for show­ing the “pres­ence of alco­hol” in juve­niles, since the device doesn’t have to be accu­rate, only show if alco­hol is present or not.

But in cases like shown in this case it is pos­si­ble for a pos­i­tive read­ing from some­one who didn’t drink any­thing at all. Similarly, if some­one were to drink a “non-alcoholic” beer, and imme­di­ately get tested with a portable breath tester, there is every chance they would have a pos­i­tive read­ing. Non-alcoholic beers usu­ally have very small amount of alco­hol present. The portable breath tester has no way of even attempt­ing to deter­mine if the alco­hol it reads is com­ing from someone’s breath, or from their mouth.

Hopefully the police fol­lowed up with a real alco­hol test. Something like a blood test, or even another breath tester that was admin­is­tered after a 15 minute depri­va­tion period. If not, I hope the teen’s fam­ily gets them­selves a good attor­ney, and a good sci­en­tist, so the trier of fact can at least hear about the inher­ent prob­lems with rely­ing on a portable breath tester — even if they ignore the issues.

ANN GIVENS
May 30, 2008

They say a lover’s kiss can be intoxicating.

Gianna Vigliotti, who was pulled over by police as she swerved in and out of her lane on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset Friday night, said that’s exactly what hap­pened to her, accord­ing to court documents.

After the 17-year-old from Glen Cove recorded a .15 per­cent blood-alcohol level in a portable breath test — nearly the twice the legal limit of .08 per­cent — she told the offi­cer who pulled her over, “I didn’t drink! I was kiss­ing a boy who was drunk,” accord­ing to the police report.

It made no dif­fer­ence to Officer Michael Pallazzo whether Vigliotti’s speech was slurred from smooching or from swig­ging. When he found four full beer bot­tles under the pas­sen­ger seat of her Volkswagen and an empty beer can in her purse, he placed her under arrest, court doc­u­ments said.

She pleaded not guilty the fol­low­ing day, and was released to pro­ba­tion with­out bail. She is next due in court June 18.

Vigliotti’s attor­ney, Dennis Lemke of Mineola, said his client and her fam­ily are dev­as­tated by the charge.

“To now have it pub­li­cized is not only embar­rass­ing, but demean­ing as well,” he said. “We expect it to be resolved in the near future.”