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Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Courts - "DUI acquittal reveals shortcomings in Kentucky state lab testing"
That is the heading of this very long story in the Louisville Courier Journal, reported by Andrew Wolfson. It begins:
[The driver failed a field sobriety test when she was stopped, but she] registered a 0.00 when her breath was tested for alcohol at the Jefferson County Jail. And though she said she had taken a prescribed painkiller an hour earlier, according to a jail officer’s notation, no trace of drugs in her system by the Kentucky State Police laboratory.As a result, on the second day of her trial, Jefferson District Judge Sheila Collins ordered her acquittal March 5 on a charge of driving under the influence, saying the commonwealth had failed to prove what — if anything — had impaired her.
The Jefferson County Attorney’s Office says the case illustrates the limitations of the state police toxicology screen, which tests for only 40 of the mostly commonly abused drugs in Kentucky.
“We are not ‘NCIS,’” Assistant County Attorney Tracey Frazier said, referring to the popular television show where technicians solve cases with the most minute evidence.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 19, 2013 08:46 AM
Posted to Courts in general