Cedar Rapids DUI Lawyer: 1 breath test per day in October ‘24

As of this writing, October 12, 2024, there have been just 12 OWI breath evidentiary breath tests in Cedar Rapids and surrounding area, with 11 at the Sobriety Testing and OWI Processing Office (“STOP”) office and just one at the Marion, Iowa Police Department. There has been one refusal, one incomplete, and one invalid sample. That amounts to about one a day.

Commonly misidentified as “breathalyzers,” these Datamaster DMT machines are built by Intoximeter and test for breath alcohol in Iowa drunk driving investigations.

The DMT breath test machines are getting old. The unit now used most frequently in Linn County, Iowa, is serial number 100225, first placed into service September 2, 2010. For most of the last decade it served as a back up, sitting next to DMT serial number 145806 at the STOP office.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety and Linn County Sheriff have now seen fit to swap those roles with 145806 on back up duty with 100225 serving in a primary role.

In Iowa, a law enforcement officer who has reasonable grounds to believe that a motorist has operated a motor vehicle while under the influence may invoke “implied consent.” Under this legal doctrine, a motorist “impliedly consents” to waiver of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from an unreasonable search of their person in exchange for the privilege to obtain a driver license in Iowa or to obtain Iowa’s “full faith and credit” in their out of state driver’s license. If a motorist provides a breath sample and it is greater than the presumptive level of intoxication, .08 g ETOH/210 L breath, the officer may seize the Defendant’s Iowa driver’s license as a designee for the Iowa DOT, an administrative penalty separate and distinct from the Iowa criminal investigation and prosecution. An Iowa law enforcement officer may not seize an out-of-state license but “interstate compacts” will dictate communication between Iowa and the out of state license issuer.

While a motorist can revoke this implied consent by refusing to provide an evidentiary breath test, the administrative driver’s license revocation is usually twice as long for refusals as it is for test failure, a fact impressed upon suspects with the reading of an implied consent advisory prior to their decision to test or refuse.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety Datamaster DMT manual indicates that a test results in an incomplete sample when three of four requirements are met to complete a continuous breath sample over four seconds, a minimum breath volume of at least 1.3 liters, and a minimum breath flow rate over three liters per minute—but the machine’s “slope detector” cannot definitively discern whether the sample is tainted by a so-called “negative slope,” or ethanol deriving from something other than deep lung air. See Iowa DPS DMT Manual, p. 58. An invalid sample occurs when the slope detector can, indeed, detect a negative going slope, thereby indicating a source of ethanol other than deep lung air. Both invalid and incomplete samples are represented in October 2024, so far.

The DMT tests each sample twice. The average of those two samples for the 12 tests that have occurred thus far in October 2024 is .145 and .145556 g ETOH/210 L breath, respectively. The county attorney will use the lower of the two in any given DUI case, called Operating While Intoxicated in Iowa, or, OWI.

Who is the best Cedar Rapids lawyer for your DUI or OWI case? We cannot claim to be the best—and no one can—because ‘best’ is subjective and misleading. If you’re looking for a Cedar Rapids criminal lawyer with 22 years of experience, we want to be on your list. Contact us.