Brief filed: 12/06/2010
Documents
Bullcoming v. New Mexico
United States Supreme Court; Case No. 09-10876
Prior Decision
Decision below 226 P.3d 1 (N.M. 2010).
Argument(s)
At the petitioner’s trial for driving while intoxicated, the prosecution called an analyst who took no part in the testing of petitioner’s blood for alcohol content; the New Mexico Supreme Court held that blood alcohol analysis was a simple test in which the presence of the actual analyst was not necessary to interpret the results. This often-technical brief argues that blood alcohol testing using gas chromatography (GC) for analyzing blood alcohol involves exercise of the analyst’s judgment in interpreting results that presents a risk of error that can be discovered only through cross-examination of the analyst who ran the test; a proper cross-examination would include questions that only the actual analyst could answer.
Author(s)
Barbara E. Bergman, Univ. of New Mexico School of Law, Albuquerque, et al.