How much alcohol vapor is present in your lungs depends in part on how much you’ve drank, but some people just don’t fit the average. One prominent toxicologist found a person with a 533:1 ratio. That means that this poor joe, assuming he was 160 lbs., could drink two beers in one hour and blow a .21, even though his actual BAC is only .05. Jurors would clearly say “guilty” presented with the so-called scientific evidence of the Datamaster, even though a .05 would be clearly disputable under current laws and the person’s physiological state. The breath test would say this fella was hammered when he was actually sober!
Michigan Blood Alcohol Content Part 2
Because breath doesn’t directly measure blood alcohol content, the terms BrAC (breath alcohol content) is used more precisely in breath cases instead of BAC.
Blood testing is the only direct means of measuring a person’s actual BAC. There are problems with blood testing, however.
The formula to determine BAC does not necessarily produce reliable BrAC results.
There are problems with blood testing.
Hospitals will draw blood from a person to decide preliminary whether to administer certain drugs or certain treatments. To analyze blood, a nurse will draw a sample and sent to the lab “stat,” meaning they want the result within fifteen minutes. The lab will separate all cellular materials from the blood sample in order to ascertain the general alcohol content. Because alcohol will concentrate in the non_cellular materials, however, this result will be higher than the actual alcohol content reflecting the true BAC. Depending upon on the amount of cellular materials (which varies from person to person), this result can dramatically inflate the apparent BAC. These results are referred to as serum or plasma blood analysis test results.
The only true and accurate way to analyze BAC is through a whole blood sample. Unfortunately, these results take time, care, and caution. Whole blood tests are performed by the Michigan State Toxicology Unit, a division of the Michigan State Police.
For whole blood analysis, a blood sample is drawn and sent to the toxicology lab. The blood should be refrigerated, but it isn’t refrigerated until it reaches the lab. Police officers send these samples through the mail. They sent it by regular US mail, while it sits in a truck in a box. Despite being a yucky thought, it is forensically not acceptable. Days or weeks after the sample was drawn, the state lab receives the sample and promptly places it into a refrigerator.
If you haven’t caught on yet, let me send you a ham sandwich in the mail next week, days or weeks after it sat on my desk. Would you put it in a refrigerator and later eat it? Why not?
Fermentation (i.e. the process or rotting) creates nasty things. One of the by_products of fermentation is that sugars turn into alcohol. The weeks_old ham sandwich will contain all sorts of bacteria, but the sugars in that ham will have also produced alcohol. And if you try to prove what the pig drank before turning into a ham sandwich based upon the presence of alcohol . . . Well, you get the point.
In order to convict someone based upon a BAC, whether it’s BrAC, hospital BAC, or a BAC from the Michigan State Toxicology Unit, the results must be reliable and relevant. You can’t trust the judge to suppress these tests just because the science is bad. Judges will typically pass along these issues to jurors. So, while various advocacy groups attempt to make it easier to convict people of a crime, juries appear to be the only safe guard to these unreasonable measures.