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Drunk Driving Cases Turn on Source Code

Breath Test Company Refuses to Disclose Code, to Defense Lawyers' Delight
March 12, 2006

MIAMI - Timothy Muldowny's lawyers decided on an unconventional approach to fight his drunken driving case: They sought computer programming information for the Intoxilyzer alcohol breath analysis machine to see whether his test was accurate.

Their strategy paid off.

The company that makes the Intoxilyzer refused to reveal the computer source code for its machine because it was a trade secret. A county judge tossed out Muldowny's alcohol breath test - a crucial piece of evidence in a DUI case - and the ruling was upheld by an appeals court in 2004.

Source: http://msnbc.msn.com/


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Posted Thursday, March 22, 2007
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Posted by Kathy at 2008-12-11 19:16
My son was on his way home from work stopped and ate at a friends house & drank some beer. He was 15 minutes from home.stopped to pick up cigaretts and was attacted from behind and chooked unconious. The gas station attendent call the police an abulance was call. He got arested
at the police station the officer three hours later took a bac test
I asked them to take pictures of my sons face, eyes neck, arm & leg to show the cut above his eye and blood cots in his eyes & his neck black & Blue. He did this with a polaroid camera. we looked at the pictures and they turned out very good.He said he had to put them in the safe for evidents. Well at the trial he got on the stand and first said he threw them away and the next day he said he never took picture.My son sits in prison because of lies that was told on the stand and also shows in the court minutes know one told the same story. He got 4 to 7 in prision.Knowone wants to help. I sure lost all respect for the law I never thought law enforcement officers lied. the only one that didn't testify was the officer that was on the scene first and aparrently he wouldn't lie on the stand.
Posted by charley at 2008-12-31 12:44
As I read these articles, it makes me think of the citizens of Nazi Germany before Hitler came to power. The Muldowney case culminated in thousands of dui defendants arguing the same thing in their cases, the judge did not suppress the breathalyzer, he just suppressed the states precumption of guilt, the state could not give a jury instruction to the jury that said "The defendant is presumed guilty under the law. Unless he proves his innocence, you must convict". The prosecution wasn't going to lose all these convictions right or wrong, so the appealed, it took 2 years because the manufacturer of the breath testing machine got involved in the case, a giant corporation that had millions to spend together with the state of Florida with millions to spend too. The appellate court upheld the judge's decision about the presumption of guilt, and guess what? The legislature changed the law and said both the trial and appellate court made the wrong decision. People who don't know what's happening in our legal system better wake up. To use a famous quote from a citizen post war Nazi Germany "First they came for the drunks, but I wasn't a drunk so I didn't speak up...and when they came for me there was nobody left to speak up".
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