What prosecutors are looking for in a blood case is a number. They are looking to see whether there was a number generated by a blood test. They find it very easy to latch on to that number. They look for a one-page report from the crime lab making a nice, neat little summary of what the blood alcohol level or the drug level was in a person at the time of the test. That’s very different than what a defense attorney should be looking for, but that’s a different question.
Do Defendants Ever Get Their Own Blood Tests to Prove Their Innocence?
There are a couple of different situations where blood draws can be used by the defense. Sometimes, when somebody is arrested for driving under the influence, they may agree to submit to a breath test and officers may tell them that the breath testing does not maintain or store a sample of the person’s breath. So, if someone submits to a breath test, that sample is analyzed by a machine and then a number is spit out and the breath sample is gone.
With blood testing the person may not believe the number, so they can have it reanalyzed or analyzed at their own lab. That is definitely a possibility, and many attorneys will choose to do that. When someone’s blood is taken, their requirements of how the blood is drawn and how much blood is drawn. The agency that draws the blood sample is required in the State of California to maintain or preserve that sample and its integrity and quantity so it can be retested if need be.
Let’s say somebody is arrested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and has their blood drawn at a local hospital. Perhaps the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station arrested a person who was then taken to Cedars-Sinai for a blood draw. That blood would be transported to the Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab in Downey for analysis. It would be possible for a person accused of driving under the influence or their attorney to order what’s called a “blood split” or to request a portion of the blood be taken from the blood vial and transported to an independent lab for analysis. By ordering a blood split, an independent lab could retest the sample for alcohol content.
You could also have the blood sample tested for anti-coagulant and preservative, you could also have it tested for bacteria, you could have blood retested or you could have it tested for DNA or blood type. There’s a lot of work that can be done on blood that cannot be done on breath after the person has been released and the case is being defended in court. So, blood splits can be an important part of a case and can be used as a great tool in defending cases.
Are There Any Cases Where a Blood Draw May Have Questionable Results?
Yes. The blood analysis can be done for alcohol or drugs, and blood can be retested. If properly stored and maintained, a portion of the blood from the tube is taken out and analyzed on a gas chromatograph. If the run or the analysis is compromised or messed up in some way, they can trash the run: they can throw out that portion of the sample, go back to the original tube and do another analysis for alcohol content.
If it comes back and it’s free of alcohol, the lab may choose then to retest another portion of the blood for drugs and they may test it for a certain class of drugs or a drug panel. Depending on the results, they may go back to the original tube and test again for another panel, another type of drugs that they may be looking for. So, blood can be tested for both alcohol and drugs, and it can be retested.
What Sort of Expert Witnesses Are Used in a Blood Draw Case?
When looking at the blood analysis, it often helps to have an expert assisting the analysis. An expert in a blood case could be somebody who is familiar with a crime lab’s procedures and policies and how the blood is analyzed in a crime lab. You also may want to get an expert on blood draw or how the blood was taken from the person because there are all different types of error that can occur in a blood analysis.
You can have a pre-analytical error, which means all of the potential things that go wrong before the blood sample reaches the gas chromatograph or the machine that’s used to test the blood, and then you have analytical error once the blood is in the machine. Oftentimes it’s helpful to have somebody familiar with how the gas chromatograph works and how it’s run to be able to explain to a judge or jury or a DMV hearing officer what was faulty and how the analysis in a particular case is compromised.
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