On February 19, 2014, effective April 1, 2014, upon the joint recommendation of the Criminal Procedural Rules Committee and the Committee on Rules of Evidence, the Supreme Court adopted new Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 574 to provide procedures for the admissibility of forensic laboratory reports in lieu of expert testimony. Click for Order Click…
read more »Category: Chemical Test
How a Lawyer-Scientist DUI Lawyer can Help: The toxicology of the Justin Bieber case
How a Lawyer-Scientist DUI Lawyer can Help: The toxicology of the Justin Bieber case There is a large difference between a DUI lawyer and a DUI Lawyer-Scientist. As I wrote before, I am not just a lawyer, not just a defense lawyer, but a trained Lawyer-Scientist. There are not too many of us out there,…
read more »
The science of the Justin Bieber DUI case: How a lawyer-scientist can help
The science of the Justin Bieber DUI case: How a lawyer-scientist can help [Updated on 26 January 2014 at 905 am EST entitled “The Problem with the Resisting Arrest without Violence charge.”] [Updated on 31 January at 1216 pm EST to include the TMZ link to the GPS records.] There are a lot of my…
read more »Oral Fluid Drug Test-Frye and Daubert hearings-The future of DUID enforcement
Oral Fluid Drug Test for DUID cases: Frye and Daubert hearings The future is Oral Fluid Drug Test. The writing is on the wall. Through increased federal funding and a re-prioritization of law enforcement, Driving Under the Influence of Drugs (DUID) is an emerging enforcement priority by police across America. The difficulty has been in…
read more »
Why it is right to be a modern day skeptic: The need to continue to challenge sacred cows: Paradigm Shift
(Pictured above: A sacred cow) A sacred cow is defined as "an object or practice which is considered immune from criticism, especially unreasonably so." They exist all around us. Some healthy. Most are not. It is vitally important for the evolution of man and science to identify, examine and challenge sacred cows. In short to…
read more »
What Pac-Man and Inflated and Incorrect Blood Alcohol Content results have in common
See……there is this animatronic character that we all know called Pac-Man. Pac-Man has everything to do with inaccurate BAC results. Honestly, when was the last time you even thought about playing this great game. Well, here is your chance. Free Online Flash Games Since its release in May 22, 1980, the little pixel gobbling creature…
read more »
Crimping a Headspace Vial in Gas Chromatography: How not putting the “lid on the jar” can lead to disaster in a DUI case
As mentioned in an earlier post, there are many potential sources for error when it comes to Blood Alcohol Testing for DUI. This is very important in blood-based DUI cases where the Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) is reported because many of the prosecutors I have faced erroneously believe that these blood test results are infallible in…
read more »
The Problem with Drug Recognition Expert and Why it is Designed for Failure
When people think of DUI, they often think of Drunk Driving meaning drinking too much alcohol. There is, of course, another form of DUI that is referred to as DUID or Driving Under the Influence of Drugs, both legal prescription drugs and illegal drugs. As such, it now becomes very important for DUI Lawyers to…
read more »
On the origin of Species-Why do we use Gray Tubes for Forensic Blood Analysis for BAC
A colleague of mine from Colorado asked a very good question: Why on Earth do we use Gray tube tops for forensic blood analysis to determine Blood Alcohol Content for ETOH (drinking alcohol)? The answer is evolution or really “re-purposing”. It got me to thinking… On the 24th day of November…
read more »
Gas Chromatography and why is it is so important to Pennsylvania DUI arrests
First off what is Chromatography? Chromatography is strictly and simply speaking "separation science". It is the study of how an analyst can take a complex matrix (compound) and separate it out into its component parts. It is a relatively "new" form of analytical chemistry in that the first true use of modern chromatography is usually…
read more »