San Francisco DUI Lawyer - DUI Judicial Decision Analysis

 Posted on March 10, 2013 in DUI

Recent DUI Judicial Decisions With Analysis By Board Certified DUI Attorney Paul Burglin

Calibration Records Held Admissible Over Confrontation Objections
People v. Lopez
55 Cal.4 ^th 569 (2012)

Seizing on Sotomayor’s concurring opinion in Bullcoming (“machine-generated" data may be admissible), the California Supreme Court held that a lab report was properly admitted even though the analyst did not testify. It was a six-page report that included the following:

‪Page 1 - Chain of custody log sheet (showing the results of nine blood samples the analyst tested on the same date, including defendant’s)

Page 2 - Printout of the GC machine’s calibrations on the day of the test

Pages 3 and 6 - Quality control runs before and after the samples were tested

Pages 4 and 5 - Two computer-generated numerical results (.0906 and.0908)

‪The majority opinion described pages 2-6 of the documents as machine-generated data measuring calibrations, quality control, and the blood-alcohol concentration. Though the analyst had initialed page 1 and signed page 2, there was no statement by him on any of the pages. The testifying criminalist said he was a colleague of the analyst and had trained him, was intimately familiar with his procedures in testing blood for alcohol, and that everyone in the lab was trained in the same manner. Based on his own training, he said he concurred with the results. Cf., Bullcoming (no underlying data or chromatograms were offered at trial in Bullcoming , and no independent opinion was offered by the surrogate witness).