The Intoxilyzer 8000 breath-test machine, the state’s only approved breathlyzer machine, is under attack by defense lawyers in Southwest Florida who asked the company to release the computer code on the machine, reports the Herald-Tribune. CMI, Inc., Kentucky-based maker of the Intoxilyzer 8000, believes the code is protected trade information. Defense attorneys want to study how the machine works to check the validity of its results.
Despite a judge’s order to produce the source code and a Florida Supreme Court ruling that upheld subpoenas for the information, CMI has yet to comply, putting thousands of DUI cases in limbo.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, says the Intoxilyzer 8000 works and has no plan to approve another instrument.
What are the issues?
Sarasota defense attorney Tom Hudson writes on this website that the Intoxilyzer 8000 is based upon the Zilog Z-80 microprocesso, the “same chip was the brains of the Tandy TRS-80, which was the hit of the home computer industry…..in 1977.”
When the Intoxilyzer is calibrated, if the temperature of the testing solution is off by as little as one-fifth of one degree (.20), the calibration is not considered accurate. According to local DUI defense attorney Eric Stevenson, there are breathlyzers that can capture temperature and even samples of the driver’s breath, but FDLE is happy with the current machine and its limited software.
To complicate the issue locally, during the course of discovery local attorneys have deposed the FDLE agent, Margaret Geddings, in charge of the annual inspections of the Intoxilyzer 8000 machines in this judicial district. Geddings said that she had used her cell phone on occasion to abort her test of the machines. If a machine fails two tests, it can no longer be used. On the second test, if a machine was failing its second test, she said that she would abort the test with her cell phone, make adjustments to the machine and restart it.
Geddings said that the failures were due to the machine, but to some error on her part. She admitted that she only notified an agency inspector of the aborted test if the one was in the room. Geddings didn’t notify her superiors if she intentionally aborted an inspection test.
Stevenson believes that this calls into question the validity of the inspection, especially if the inspector can stop and restart that crucial second test.