6. Blood Tests
Blood Draw.
The California Vehicle Code requires that only certain licensed or qualified individuals in Santa Rosa may draw blood for testing, if acting at the request of a Sonoma County peace officer. These individuals are certified paramedics, or licensed as physicians and surgeons, registered nurses, vocational nurses, clinical laboratory scientists, clinical laboratory bioanalysts, or certified phlebotomy technicians, or unlicensed laboratory personnel employed by a licensed clinical laboratory and supervised and fully trained by one of the above. VC Section 23158. BPC Sections 1242, 1242.5, 1246.
If the Sonoma County police report indicates that the individual who drew your blood for testing was not properly qualified under the law, then your Sonoma County DUI attorney should fight any effort to use the test results against you in Sonoma County Superior Court or at the Santa Rosa DMV. Sometimes the police report simply lists a name without any further indication of what title or qualifications are associated with the individual who drew your blood following the DUI arrest. Further investigation may be conducted to determine if a defense of noncompliance is applicable to your blood draw. This approach may be particularly effective if other factors indicate a possible error in blood sample collection, such as your recollection of how much you drank differs from an unexpected blood test result, or the breath testing results are inexplicably different from the blood test result.
Retesting Your Blood Sample.
Government testing mistakes do happen, even here in Santa Rosa. Click here to see An Example Of Lab Error, and here for Another Example Of Government Lab Problems. Moreover, if you took a blood test during the arrest process, the results may show a problem identified on the tox report by the Department Of Justice laboratory in Santa Rosa. In addition, blood test specimens are retained by the Santa Rosa lab for retesting by you and your lawyer at an independent lab if desired. Your Santa Rosa lawyer can formally request a Sonoma County District Attorney authorization for retest, which is sent to the Department Of Justice where a split sample of your blood is then sent to the lab of our choice for independent analysis.
Although this typically involves additional expense to you, nevertheless your DUI lawyer will explain to you that retesting can confirm blood type and DNA if there is a question whether the Sonoma County sample originally tested is in fact yours. Also, retesting can often lower the result number by .01 to .03 which may drop your result below .08 (or below .01 in the case of a minor) providing a better chance of dismissal, or may provide additional assistance in plea bargaining efforts with the Sonoma County District Attorney in Santa Rosa to obtain a wet reckless or avoid additional penalties for very high blood alcohol levels.
Click here to see a recent example of an independent lab analysis showing a New .07 Retest Result after retesting an initial .08 blood result from the Department of Justice. This effort, combined with a wet reckless bargain from the District Attorney, resulted in a complete victory at DMV and no driver license suspension for this client. Understand that all cases are unique and a blood retest in your case may not produce such victorious results, but some blood test cases may benefit from a retest and other means of independently confirming or denying initial government assumptions and conclusions.
Hospital Draws.
If your blood was drawn by Santa Rosa hospital staff because you were hospitalized due to injury, standard DUI blood draw techniques may not have been used (for example an alcohol swab may have been used to sterilize your arm). A local hospital draw can be challenged if there is any suspicion that the results may be faulty due to incorrect blood draw procedure or that an unqualified individual drew your blood. In addition, issues regarding patient-doctor confidentiality may arise and prevent the government's use of a Sonoma County hospital draw, particularly if the draw was not originally made pursuant to a request by a Sonoma County peace officer as required by the Vehicle Code.