Virginia Breath Test Science

That’s enough about me. What I want to do now is talk about the science of breath testing, give you a little bit of an overview. If you have refused the breath test or they are accusing you of refusing the breath test, this portion of this tape is not going to be relevant to you. However, I think you aught to just pay attention anyway, because it’s interesting stuff that nobody that doesn’t normally realize what’s going on with this, even judges and other lawyers out there.

Breath Test Certificates

If you had a breath test this is what you’re getting, it’s a certificate of analysis. If you look a the top, and I’m going to have one there, you’ll have one there you can refer to in the binder that’s sitting on the table in front of you, it’s call a certificate of blood alcohol analysis. Now, you didn’t give blood. If you look down at the bottom on the, you're going to see that it says you were advised of your right to observe the process and see the blood alcohol reading on the equipment. Again, they are referring to that number there, the .08 or whatever your number is, as blood alcohol content. I’d like you to look, now I’m going to explain to you why they have to deal with blood, in fact, let me do that now.

The Science Behind Alcohol

Anytime that you drink, beer, wine, or liquor, what you're drinking is this. It’s ethanol. When ethanol gets in your stomach, it then goes to the intestines, and then it will get into your blood stream. From there, it travels up to your brain and that’s what impairs your or intoxicates you. Alcohol or ethanol in your lungs does not impair you. Anyway, the certificate of blood alcohol analysis, I’d like you to take a look at your alcohol content on the sheet if you have your green sheet with you. This one for example says a .14, which is a sample of alcohol content that is .14. Now, nobody has been able to come in and tell me what that exactly means. I’m going to tell you what it means. .14 is 14% and you see the next word there is grams, so it’s 14% of a gram.

Now, to get an idea of what a gram is like, take a sweet and low sugar packet, dump it on the table, take 86% of that packet, and brush it off the table. You’re left with 14% of a gram. The line goes on though; it says it’s per 210 liters of breath. Now not one of you has blown 210 liters of breath into the Intoxilyzer 5000. 210 liters of breath is the equivalent of 105, 2 liter bottles. If you were to take 105 2-liter bottles, and dump it into a barrel, you would fill up a 55 gallon drum. So let's take our 14% of that sugar packet, of that sweet and low, put it in the 55 gallon drum, mix it all around, and that’s the percentage of alcohol that they say that you have in your blood.

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