Refusing a DUI Blood Test

If you are arrested on suspicion you will be taken to the police station and you will be given the option of giving either a blood or a breath test. Both of them have pros and cons. With regard to a breath test there is no ability to have a sample re-tested by your defense team once the case goes to court. Once you blow into the machine, the breath sample is gone and we are left with whatever result that it says. With regard to a blood test some people are afraid of needles, some people don't want to give their blood, but giving a blood test could have a few different benefits: Number one, the blood sample is retained by the crime lab and I am able to go into court and demand a court order to get a sample of the blood and give it to an independent expert who doesn't work for the government - that doesn't work for the police department. They can independently analyze the blood to see if there is the same alcohol concentration that the government is alleging, but we go even further. The crime lab, the CSIs that are examining the blood, are only testing for the actual blood alcohol concentration at that moment and what they are not testing for is the levels of preservative and anticoagulant that are supposed to be in that sample. When they draw your blood, it is put into this glass test tube called a vacutainer, there is supposed to be a little pink substance on the bottom that is the preservative and anticoagulant. The preservative, the sodium fluoride, the anticoagulant is potassium oxalate. Those are supposed to be in the sample in a certain amount to make sure that the integrity of the sample can be insured; however, the crime lab, the government, they are not testing for that. They don't care. They want the level to be as high as possible. We take it a step further. Not only do we test for the blood alcohol concentration, we test for the levels of preservative and anticoagulant to make sure that the integrity of the sample is insured. The law requires that the preservative be in that sample in a sufficient quantity. Also, we take it another step further. We send the blood out to a different lab to have it tested for bacterial growth. So, just like grape juice could ferment and turn to wine, where the fermentation feeds on the sugar and creates alcohol, alcohol can actually be created in the test tube sample. This means once your blood is drawn, if all the proper procedures and proper chemicals are not there in sufficient amounts your blood can actually ferment and create increased alcohol in the test tube once it was already out of your body. So,it is very important that we check that and make sure; but the crime lab, they aren't checking for any of those things.