What is the best way to refute results of the official breath test in Georgia?
Answer: The best way to refute the official breath test is not to take it. That’s the best, that’s what I tell everyone. And if I were stopped for DUI, I would absolutely refuse everything. That’s always the best advice. But, that said, when someone does the state-administered breath test, there are ways to beat it. And one of the most common ways that I find is that we try to prove that the officer that administered it did not know what he was doing. These machines are very complicated; they have to be calibrated and maintained. And in fact there’s a handbook, there’s a whole 200 to 300-page handbook on how to do that. And I actually have that in my office, I’m very familiar with it. I cross-examine officers all the time about it. And that’s one of the main things that we can do is show that the officer didn’t know what he was doing when the machine was run. But there are also other things that we can show. Anytime they do the test, they have to show the machine was working properly. And what they do is they do an initial scan of it that’s supposed to show a blank. They’re supposed to show your blood alcohol level after you do it, blank it out again, do a second level reading from you, and then look at those and technically take, they usually look at the higher number of those two; they’re supposed to take the lower, but usually they’re going to look at the higher and try to push that. If there’s any deviation between those two numbers, though, what I have done is gotten the whole thing thrown out on the basis of the Intoxilyzer itself can’t be relied upon because if there’s any more than .02 of a difference or any, any little difference, that gives us something great to try to argue that, which is otherwise a pretty tough test to beat.