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No one supports a driver’s decision to get behind the wheel after excessively consuming alcohol. When my family drives down the road, they are in as much danger as you are from the harm caused by a drunk driver. As an attorney, however, I have an obligation to assure that the rights of people are protected from the misuse of “science” in an overly zealous pursuit of a laudable public goal. There are serious flaws in the administration and evaluation of the standardized field sobriety tests and the evidential breath testing protocol adopted by the Ohio Department of Health. What is worse, Ohio has unilaterally adopted a position that attorneys cannot challenge the general scientific principles of the breath testing machine in court. (See State v. Vega and the following VIDEO). When science in the courtroom is manipulated to serve a perceived public need, we diminish the integrity of our system of justice and we lose an important characteristic of what it means to be an American. Stand with me in opposing OVI checkpoints, forced blood draws, forfeiture laws, agenda driven justice, neo-prohibitionism, pseudo-science, stupid human tricks and machines that decide guilt or innocence.
