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What If You Are Too Discouraged To Fight A Blood Draw Case?


People say that all the time on blood and breath tests. There is a misconception that most people have that if your number is over the limit, over a 0.08, you’re going to be guilty of a DUI or that you were DUI, that you were at or over the limit.

However, the law looks at what was your blood alcohol level at the time of driving. We may have a rising blood alcohol level as a defense, there is a margin of error in both breath testing and blood testing and there are inaccuracies and the mistakes that can be made and all the different defenses regarding things like change of custody, contamination and inaccuracy. There are just so many different things that we can look at and people should not just assume because they are at or over the limit that they are going to be found guilty of a DUI.

There many different ways to try and fight these cases. Anybody who does not fight or does not get an excellent DUI defense attorney has no chance of winning. This is something that is too important and most people feel that way because of all the penalties that come along with the DUI and not just the financial and having you do classes and insurance going up but for issues like credit, employment, and travel.

You really want to try and fight these cases. A blood case is something that can be fought and the way to fight it is to hire an attorney who knows what they are doing to do the investigation and to find the issues and educate you on your chances of winning the case and what needs to be done to win it and then taking steps to do so if you do want to fight based on what the discovery process has revealed.

Have You Ever Had a Case Where Something Other than Alcohol Was Detected in the Blood Stream?

I’ve had lots of cases where people have shown things that are not alcohol and they are clearly drugs that will impair their ability to drive. There can be situations, and often this is seen in breath testing where someone is in ketosis for being on a protein diet, or people have medical conditions; sometimes you can have situations where someone has been inhaling some type of intoxicant, paint fumes, things like that, those can be masked as alcohol; however in a blood case, we typically won’t see those.

Those are situations where using expert witnesses, medical doctors, or forensic toxicologists, is extremely important, especially when someone has a medical condition. Someone could have gastric reflux, which is something that would show up in a breath test, not a blood test.

I get a number of cases where my clients will tell me that they do have reflux and a blood test is done and they have also done a preliminary alcohol screening breath test and they will tell me that the point whatever, one, two that the officer told them they blew on the breath test is inaccurate because they only had one drink or two drinks, then we get the blood test back and it’s the same or very similar.

The problem there is the reflux is not going to be shown with the blood test. That’s going to be more of a true blood alcohol level whereas on a breath test, reflux may lead to a false positive because you’re getting gases coming up from the stomach through the throat, through the lower and upper esophageal sphincters, into the mouth and out into the breath machine along with the deep lung alveolar layer from a blow into the breath machine.

What Percentage Of the Time Do Blood Draws Commonly Happen In DUI Cases?

Most of the cases that I see are breath tests. There is a good number of blood tests. The police will often steer someone toward a breath test because it’s much quicker and often the police will tell people when they say, “What should I do?” and they are not supposed to tell them but a lot of times the officers will say, “If you do a blood test, we’re not going to have the results and you are going to have to stay here for X amount of time; if you do a breath test, it may not be as long” or, “If you blow under the legal limit, we’ll let you go right now.”

It’s not always a good idea to just do the breath test because, there can be a lot more things that can go wrong with a blood test. I can’t put a percentage on it. At least, 20% or 30% of blood tests, I could be off a little bit there, I’m sure there are statistics somewhere or could be found, but most people do breath tests.

For more information on Feeling Distraught in a Blood Draw Case, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you’re seeking by calling (415) 523-7878 today.

Aaron Bortel

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