Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A further update on the intoxilyzer scandal

I have an 80-something year-old client down in Galveston County who rear-ended another driver in the middle of the day and was arrested for suspicion of DWI.  Due to his age (and condition) he was unable to perform field sobriety tests at the scene.  He did, however, blow into the officer's portable breath test machine - his BAC was .18!

At the station my client blew a .13 into the state's breath test machine.  A breath test machine maintained by none other than Dee Wallace.  As a result of Ms. Wallace's filing false maintenance records on the machines under her control, the Galveston County DA offered to reduce the charge to reckless driving.

This was a result we achieved because we weren't afraid to fight the case.  There are plenty of attorneys out there who would've looked at the facts and advised their client to enter a plea.

I have spoken to a source who taught with Ms. Wallace back in the 1990's and was told that Ms. Wallace bragged ten years ago that she had an easy job with the state and that she never performed actual maintenance on the machines because of the time and expense of driving to each of the police stations.

If you've been charged with driving while intoxicated and provided a breath specimen in Galveston County, contact Houston DWI attorney Paul B. Kennedy to find out if the machine used to test your breath sample was one of the machines maintained by Dee Wallace. 


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