Open Courts

Bruce Schneier (schneier) reports on Seminole County, FL judges throwing out hundreds of DUI cases.  Why?  Because the breathalyzer manufacturer refuses to disclose how the machines work.

Prosecutors have said they do not know how many drunken drivers have been acquitted as a result. But Gino Feliciani, the misdemeanor division chief in the Seminole County State Attorney's Office, said the conviction rate has dropped to 50 percent or less.

That may sound bad ... but it's the right call.  The legal system should not convict people based on unsupported assertions of guilt -- no more, as Bruce points out, than we should accept the results of an election in which we're not told how the votes were collected and tallied.  If you're going to submit data as evidence, you'd better be prepared to explain how you derived the data and what it means, and if you can't or are unwilling to, then it should very rightly be inadmissable.

Note:  In this context, it is ENTIRELY appropriate to point fingers at the parts of the PATRIOT QUISLING Act that grant the government the power to try anyone accused of terrorism without revealing to the defendant the evidence against him or who is accusing him.  How can you defend yourself against an evidentiary claim when you don't know what it is?  Where terrorism is concerned, we are treading perilously close to "Guilty unless proven innocent" or even to "Accused, therefore guilty."