Legal Commentary

Lab Errors in Colorado Springs Result in DUI Dismissals

By Jeralyn

Faulty chemist reports in 206 DUI cases in Colorado Springs have resulted in the dismissal or reduction of charges in 9 cases, including 5 where the defendants had already served time. The faulty testing resulted in higher blood alcohols being reported.

The mistakes were discovered when two chemists were given proficiency tests and one failed. Local defense attorney Tim Busey, filed an open records request to obtain some of the documents related to the errors says:

“Every person in the county needs to be concerned about that lab,” he said. “To simply blame it on one analyst is to ignore the fact that any lab is a system of checks and balances from the lab to the certifying agency, which in this case is the department of health.”

A summary of the nine cases is here.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 20, 2010 (boomark / email).