Babeu to draw blood for DUIs

Paul Babeu, fresh off a strong primary showing, unveiled his plan to improve DUI investigations in Pinal County by eliminating the use of the breath test and using blood draws for all suspects arrested for DUI.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has by rocked by news revelations that at least six drunken-driving cases have been dismissed in the Apache Junction Justice Court since January because the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office failed to keep records that verified the validity of blood-alcohol readings. Countless DUI convictions and plea agreements will likely be overturned and will certainly jeopardize many civil suits.

The cases ranged from more minor offenses of driving while impaired to operating a vehicle above the legal .08 blood-alcohol limit to extreme DUIs (1.5 BAC or higher, DUI with minor or multiple convictions) which resulted in car accidents.

The breathalyzer verification records were missing for periods from April 2007 to June 2008 in the Santan, Johnson Ranch and Gold Canyon areas, a span of 14 months.

Babeu said, “I’m very troubled that this evidence was lost and the current sheriff never made sure the records were inspected. This is a leadership failure and further compromises the reputation of our county law enforcement. Criminals will get off scot free, victims will be denied justice and our roads are not safe from impaired drivers.”

Babeu continued, “I will change this as Sheriff. I will immediately end the use of breath tests and require blood draws of DUI suspects. Blood evidence is tangible evidence and is more accurate than the breath test. Breath test evidence is only captured while it is analyzed and printed to a paper and then it is gone. Blood can be preserved for years if necessary while waiting for a court date. In addition, the suspect now has a piece of evidence that his defense attorney can have independently tested.”

The Chandler Police Department has been using only blood evidence over breath evidence for DUIs since 2001 because of the benefits and similar failings by the Department of Public Safety (DPS). DPS had many issues with how the records were kept on the Intoxilyzer Adams 5000 unit. Subsequently, hundreds of DUI cases were dismissed, and hundreds of convictions were overturned because of the record-keeping discrepancies. Chandler police, under advisement from the city prosecutor, decided to go strictly to blood for DUI evidence.

Babeu said, “The collection of blood evidence is more time efficient. With blood evidence, officers do not have to wait the 15-minute deprivation period and the eight minutes between the two breath tests. There may be more time added if an additional test has to be completed because the first two breath tests were not within .02 percent of each other. In addition, if the suspect burped, it would again delay the test until another 15-minute deprivation period could be completed. The blood sample can be obtained in about five minutes.”

Babeu concluded, “I will ask the Chandler Police Department to enter into an Inter-governmental Agreement (IGA) to process blood evidence in their lab, similar to their agreement with Gilbert. This is an interim solution until I coordinate a countywide partnership to streamline evidence collection and processing with local police departments.”

Submitted photo