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Saturday, December 3, 2011
By Michael Nichols
The constitution of the United States allows every accused citizen to have access to all evidence in a case. However, prosecutions of drunk driving cases in Lansing may be compromised by the failure of law enforcement officers to follow their own training and record all of the results of "simulated drunk" tests. "I do not see how you can call this anything other than comproimised evidence," said Lansing OWI attorney and drunk driving expert Mike Nichols. Nichols wrote the book on drunk driving in Michigan and is an adjunct professor of DUI law in Michigan at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing.
Nichols made the discovery by digging through the individual simulator tickets for one of 2 breath test devices used in the Lansing Police Department lock-up. "We found that on at least one occassion, the officer failed to record a simulator check result. In the most blatant example, the operator did not write down a simulator result that was pretty far away from the limit for allowable variance on the datamaster," Nichols said. He added: "The check result that the operator did record was closer to the limit, but prior to that he failed to record a check result that was appreciably farther away from the limit."
The impact is unknown but the ultimate problem is that the officer thought it was ok to contradict his training manual or, worse yet, has even failed to check the manual from time to time to verify the steps for a simulator check. If you need a lawyer who will fight to learn your story, contact the Nichols Law Firm at 517 432 9000 or contact Mike Nichols directly at mnichols@nicholslaw.net