A judge in Ohio has issued an order that he will not allow breath test results from the Intoxilyzer 8000 machine into evidence in DUI cases until such time as the machine can be shown to be reliable.
The judge apparently noted that the machine’s results have been banned in certain parts of Florida due to the manufacturer’s refusal to produce the evidence that the machine works the way it is supposed to, and the fact that Tennessee looked at three different breath test machines and rejected the Intoxilyzer 8000 because it was unreliable.
The Intoxilyzer 8000 is the only breath test machine approved for use in Kansas DUI breath test cases. That device is under increasing attack in different states, and the company that makes it, CMI, Inc., is running for its corporate life. The judges in Ohio and Florida who have honored their roles as gatekeepers of reliable evidence in their courts and who have stood up for decent science should be commended for insisting that this evidence be demonstrated to be what it purports to be before someone’s liberty and/or driving priveleges are taken away. Hopefully, Kansas DUI judges will start to find that just because a law enforcement or government agency says the machine works it does not make it so. There needs to be transparency as to how the machine works, and to what extent that it does not.