Texas v. F.E.

.135 BLOOD TEST. Client is from El Paso and was a student at Texas A&M. he and his wife flew into Houston then drove to College Station to see some of his old friends from the military graduate from A&M. They started out at Northgate and his friend has a rowdy night. On the way to drop his friends off, they passed out in his car and he didn’t know where they lived. They then began throwing up in the backseat of his car. Client decided to just drive to his hotel. On the way, his wife got sick so he pulled over on the side of the road. The police arrived as his wife was vomiting in the bushes. Officer approached and saw two passengers covered in vomit in the backseat. Of course, client was suspected of DWI. He performed the tests and looked normal. 3 hours later they withdrew his blood and it came back a 0.135. The DA told me that he had 27 years of experience and tried to let me know how it was going to proceed in trial. Well, it didn’t go as he planned. I was able to educate the jury on how improper the blood was drawn. The nurse literally withdrew the blood with a syringe, then shot it into a vacutainer and rotated the vials a quarter of a turn. It was obvious she had never been trained (or cross examined) on proper forensic blood draw procedure. The analyst came all the way from Austin and testified to the jury that she has done over 10,000 blood tests and never made a mistake. (come on! Even NASA makes mistakes). Luckily, I had a very smart jury and they weren’t buying what the State was selling. The jury deliberated and returned a just verdict of Not Guilty. Thank you to the jury for following the law and understanding the concept of having to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt and that the client enjoys the presumption of innocence. Truly a just verdict.