Lead Story
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According to a September article in the Orlando Sentinel, the four criminal judges in Seminole County, Florida, have since January ruled that DUI defendants have the right to technical information about the state’s breath analysis test, including its source code; when such information is requested by the defendant but not provided by prosecutors, the test data are rejected as evidence. As a result, according to an official, the DUI conviction rate in the county has dropped to 50 percent at best. Prosecutors complained that the software is a trade secret controlled by the private company that makes the test equipment, which won’t release the information, but the judges responded that the state should have bought its equipment from a manufacturer that would: “Florida cannot,” one judge wrote, “contract away the statutory rights of its citizens.”
Government in Action
The following people recently shot themselves by accident: unidentified man, abdomen, trying to dislodge round from chamber of pistol using screwdriver, lived (Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, August); unidentified male state trooper, leg, holstering pistol after catching up to fleeing suspect, lived (near Maryville, Tennessee, August); unidentified 15-year-old boy, leg, fleeing after allegedly robbing convenience store, lived (New Caney, Texas, August); unidentified woman, foot, trying to kill snake, lived (Etoile, Texas, September); same woman, other foot, presumably trying again, lived (Etoile, Texas, September); unidentified 29-year-old man, leg, after allegedly committing stickup in parking lot, then being struck by what police believe to have been intended getaway car, then being struck repeatedly by car of woman who apparently knew victim, lived (Milwaukee, October); Danny Walden, leg, trying to rig rifle as booby trap, apparently to protect 115 marijuana plants allegedly found in residence, lived (Taylorsville, Kentucky, October).
