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Is the Intoxilyzer 5000 racist?

Connecticut DUI lawyer James O. Ruane claims that the Intoxilyzer 5000 is racially biased. In a recent case, Ruane filed a motion to suppress the results of the Intoxilyzer. He stated:

the lung capacity of a black man is 3 percent smaller than a white man and, therefore, black men?s test results vary from the sobriety standard set by the device.

According to Ruane, Dr. Michael Hlastala, a lung physiologist at the University of Washington, examined research of other lung physiologists and, based on his studies, has determined the Intoxilyzer 5000 does not effectively test the blood-alcohol content of black men.

Ruane also stated:

When you combine the biases of the machine for the racial factor, the lung capacity, the conversion from a breath sample to a blood reading, and take into account a person?s natural partition ratio, you can see a possible breath test reading of a person at 0.08 that may actually be as low as .03.

That is a significant overstatement in the results. As you get further away from the standard, the overstatement grows larger in number. The machine treats every person the same, and that may cause it to discriminate against certain segments of the population. In this case, the purported results as mentioned in the article do not match the physical evidence. This was why we started looking for other explanations.

Of course, the problems with these machines have been well documented. This is just another possible example. Thanks to apublicdefender for the tip.

Full post as published by Kansas Defenders on November 28, 2008 (boomark / email).