The Defense Rests: Fight Over Intoxilyzer 5000 Enters Next Stage

Posted On December 17, 2010 by Daniel Koewler

Today, the members of the trial team for the Source Code Coalition finished presenting our evidence. At stake are over 4,000 DWI criminal and civil cases that rely almost entirely on test results produced by the Intoxilyzer 5000's "source code.|

Once we finished presenting our evidence, the State made a motion for a directed verdict - in effect, claiming that the defense failed to demonstrate that the Intoxilyzer 5000 is an error prone, faulty machine. Judge Abrams quickly ruled in our favor, and we have indeed made a prima facie case that the Intoxilyzer does not produce valid and reliable results in all cases.

This ruling is a great victory for both the Coalition and for all Minnesota drivers, and underscores the fact that this machine is indeed flawed. We've said for years that there are problems with this machine, and have repeatedly asked for nothing more than an opportunity to prove our case. Now we've done our part, and proved our case- and the State has no choice but to try and rebut the evidence that we've presented, because otherwise the Intoxilyzer test results would be deemed inadmissible in court. The State is going to start attempting to meet that burden this afternoon.

We expect the State to spend most of next week trying to overcome the evidence we've presented. While the judge hasn't issued a final ruling in this case (and likely won't do so for some time) today's ruling in our favor is a promising sign of things to come.