Getting arrested for DUI does not mean you will be convicted. Police misconduct, defective breathalyzers and crime lab mistakes may be enough to get your charges lessened or dismissed. Visit our page on Colorado DUI Laws to learn more.
Colorado DUI
Getting arrested for DUI does not mean you will be convicted. Police misconduct, defective breathalyzers and crime lab mistakes may be enough to get your charges lessened or dismissed. Visit our page on Colorado DUI Laws to learn more.
Colorado In-Depth
It is normal to be frightened and overwhelmed following an arrest. Therefore our lawyers are devoted to demystifying major topics in Colorado criminal defense law.
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There is no right or wrong answer. Both the Colorado DUI breath test and the Colorado DUI blood test have pros and cons in Colorado DUI cases, as discussed below.
People who are arrested for drunk driving in Colorado may elect to take a breath or blood test. Whatever the suspect chooses to do, people arrested for drunk driving are advised to be polite and cooperative with the police. How an arrestee reacts during this period can come in as evidence should the case go to trial.
There are four main advantages to choosing the breath test following a Colorado drunk driving arrest:
Obviously, breathalyzers do not measure the amount of alcohol in the blood. Instead, breathalyzers arithmetically convert whatever trace amounts of alcohol may be in the suspect’s breath to an equivalent blood alcohol content (BAC) number. This is known as a “partition ratio.”
Colorado police rely on the partition ratio of 2,100 to 1. Therefore, police assume that 2,100 milliliters of alcohol in a suspect’s breath means that there must be at least 1 milliliter of alcohol in his/her blood.
However, this 2,100:1 ratio is nothing more than an average. Everyone’s lungs absorb alcohol from their blood at different rates from each other. And not only do people’s partition ratios differ from each other’s — they can change day to day and fluctuate according to the person’s body temperature and the room temperature.
As opposed to some other states, Colorado law permits DUI defendants to introduce evidence of how different people have unique partition ratios. This evidence could help convince a jury to find reasonable doubt and acquit the defendant, especially if his/her BAC was near the legal limit and the state has no other evidence that the defendant was intoxicated.
There are three main advantages to choosing a blood test following a Colorado drunk driving arrest.
Since blood testing is necessarily more complex than operating a breathalyzer, there are a lot more opportunities for the state to contaminate or otherwise invalidate the sample. Just some possible mistakes the state may make that defendants can raise as a defense include:
In addition, there is always a lag time between when the suspect is pulled over and when he/she is ultimately tested. In many cases the driver’s BAC was perfectly legal while he/she was driving because the alcohol in his/her system was not fully absorbed; then the BAC went over the limit later on during the testing. This “rising blood alcohol” phenomenon could be an effective defense to DUI charges.
Michael Becker has over a quarter-century's worth of experience as an attorney and more than 100 trials under his belt. He is a sought-after legal commentator and is licensed to practice law in Colorado, Nevada, California, and Florida.