In Washington State it’s five nanograms per milliliter for marijuana, methamphetamine, heroin, or anything like that. As far as that per se level that marijuana is five nano nanograms per milliliter, science doesn’t really support that. There isn’t any correlation between that level and being affected by as far as your driving goes. But that’s the number they picked. And as far as the testing, it’s not the same machine that they use for alcohol. It is the process to when it gets to the machine that is the same. And there is plenty of room for errors in the testing. Imagine being a scientist, you went through all this schooling, and then what you’re doing is running a hundred tests a day. It gets monotonous. Test blood by putting it in tubes. And sometimes putting the tube in the wrong slot. So many places where there can be a mistake. And so that applies both to the alcohol and to the drugs.
Are there certain types of questions that we bring up during trial?
When you’re talking about blood alcohol testing procedure you’re starting out by trying to show that there the problems are significant enough that the jury shouldn’t even be able to hear about this. But then when quite often what happens is you are in a situation where the court says, yes, there’s problems here, but it’s not enough to exclude the evidence. And so then you in trial, you’re going through the, the procedures, the recommendation by all of the national organizations that have to do with science and testing and whether or not they follow those. So it’s kind of a lengthy set of questions that you’re going to go through.
It not only sounds very expensive, it is. And I think a lot of people weigh that, whether or not they will lose their driver’s license, or spend the money to have a defense so they can save their driving priviledges.
If you’re going with public defense just rememmber they’re not sending out the public disclosure requests. They are not looking into any of this information. That’s the cheaper way to go, right? But you’re pretty much feeling that the result is going to be pretty certain, that you’re going to lose your driver’s license. And along with losing that license comes a conviction, your insurance rates go up and that Washington state having to have an ignition interlock in your vehicle forever. So very expensive. In addition due to the law that just passed in Washighton for those people that are concerned about firearms, your second DUI conviction results in you not being able to have firearms. I recognize that some people can’t proper legal counsel, and they are stuck with a public defense but if want a vigorous defense that ensures every possibility of being able to leave that courtroom without those serious consequences discharged you probably need to hire a lawyer.
