According to this news account from the Houston Chronicle, the former lab supervisor of the Houston Crime Lab and another colleague quit because she did not trust the accuracy of breath test results from the Houston Police Department’s breath test machines which were operated in police vans.
From the story
“‘We could no longer choose between a paycheck and our integrity,’ Amanda Culbertson said during a hearing in a DWI case in court-at-law judge Pam Derbyshire’s court.
Culbertson said she and others trained van technicians to keep air-conditioning units on. Overheating in the van can affect the gauges, Culbertson said. It also can alter the control sample used to calibrate the breath-test machine.
She said an electrical glitch in each of the six vans meant the sophisticated $6,000 machines would reset every time the van’s air conditioner came on, which also cast doubts on accuracy.
She testified she was most concerned about cases filed during the hottest times of the year, spring and summer, beginning in 2009.”
Johnson County DUI checklanes, as well as checklanes run elsewhere in Kansas, employ these vans in order to give breath tests to people under arrest. I blogged recently about the new $400,000 van that the Kansas City, MO Police Department receieved from taxpayers to conduct checklanes in Kansas City. Kansas DUI checklanes are usually run in the spring and summer, “the hottest times of the year”. The breath test machines are subject to all kinds of variabilities which can affect test results, including voltage issues which can cause inaccurate results to be reported. No one really monitors this issue in Kansas DUI cases.
The problems with the DUI van breath tests in Houston date back to 2009. Once again, there have already been scores (hundreds? thousands?) of people who have been convicted, lost their liberty and lost their driving privileges as a result of the questionable breath tests. This former lab worker should be commended for standing up for decent science and justice. My prediction, however, is that law enforcement and prosecutors will go after her with a vengeance and attempt to discredit her and keep her from testifying in the future about the truth as she knows it.