Georgia courts are biased against DUI defendants

Posted March 7, 2013 by Alex H. Morrow

Be aware that the Georgia courts are biased against DUI defendants and there are procedures and case law in place that specifically result in the denial of a fair trial to a DUI defendant in the state of Georgia.  I can give you one very good, simple example.

At the conclusion of a DUI jury trial, the judge instructs the jury on what to do with the facts and the Georgia law as it governs the juror’s deliberation on guilt or innocence.  In doing this, the judge is, theoretically, not allowed to create an irrebutable presumption that makes it impossible for the defendant to disprove something the state must prove to establish the defendant’s guilt.

Nevertheless, the judge in the state of Georgia is entitled to tell the jury that the intoxilizer machine used by the state to measure the blood alcohol content of a person’s lung air is considered accurate if used correctly.  And, this is absolutely untrue!  Any number of experts can give a large number of reasons that the results of the intoxilizer are not reliable.

Sometimes in a DUI case the prosecution’s entire case is based on a readout of blood alcohol content from the intoxilizer.  The defendant’s entire defense in such a case may be his expert witness who has testified to numerous design and operational deficiencies of the intoxilizer machine that might have resulted in an inaccurate result.  So the state is saying to the jury, convict this person because the intoxilizer gave this result and the defendant is saying to the jury, don’t convict me because the intoxilizer is not a reliable machine.

But, the judge tells the jury, just before they retire for deliberation, that the intoxilizer results are considered to be accurate.  This has been challenged in the Georgia Court of Appeals and the appellate court upheld this practice, finding, by some sort of judicial magic, that this instruction did not create an irrebutable presumption.  Needless to say, the Georgia Court of Appeals has given a gift to the prosecutors in the state of Georgia, heavily weighting the outcome of DUI trials involving the intoxilizer in favor of the state of Georgia.