Georgia DUI Blog

I was playing with my new Alcosensor IV from Intoximeters, Inc..  It is Georgia’s portable breath tester of choice.  I found that the “mouth alcohol” (residual alcohol from having recently taken a drink) lasts much longer than I would have thought.  My drink of beer had me over the legal limit for almost five minutes and wasn’t back down to where it ought to be for a good fifteen minutes.

The significance of this is huge when we are talking about a police officer’s formulation of his decision to arrest.  Don’t think for a second that the number on the alcosensor isn’t what drives arrests.  When a citizen is literally drinking and driving with an open container in the car, chances are that they will blow a high number on the Alcosensor if they agree to blow.  This reading will be inflated and not reflective of their true BAC.  This is a bad problem with officers that administer the Alcosensor prior to the SFST’s.  He becomes biased and loses all objectivity in grading and scoring the SFST’s. 

Besides the ubiquitous “odor of alcohol,” perhaps the most common observation an officer will recite as an indicator of being under the influence of alcohol will be “bloodshot eyes.” It is very rare that we encounter a DUI case when at least these two boxes (odor of alcohol and bloodshot eyes) on the police report are not marked. When an officer relies heavily on “bloodshot eyes” as the sole basis for continuing the investigation of the driver, the case should be vigorously challenged because even NHTSA has discounted these clues as prejudicial and irrelevant to determining intoxication. NHTSA released a report in 1997 that removes “bloodshot eyes” as an indicator of impairment. The materials provide an excellent resource for cross-examination of an arresting officer. Specifically, the report states:

Finally, some cues were eliminated because they might be indicators more of social class than of alcohol impairment. For example, officers informed us that a flushed or red face might be an indication of a high BAC in some people. However, the cue also is characteristic of agricultural, oil field, and other outside work. Similarly, bloodshot eyes, while associated with alcohol consumption, also is a trait of many shift workers and people who must work more than one job, as well as those afflicted by allergies. A disheveled appearance similarly is open to subjective interpretation. We attempted to limit the recommendation to clear and objective post-stop behaviors.

Jack Stuster, U.S. Department of Transportation, NHTSA,
Final Report, The Detection of DWI at BACs Below 0.10,
DOT HS-808-654 (Sept. 1997), p. E-10