DUI Attorney Jonathan Rooker of Fresno, California attended the 15th offering of gas chromatography theory and practice at Axion Labs in June of 2015. This is Jonathan's fourth trip to Axion, an American Chemical Society sponsored DUI Defense Attorney course. This intensive study course offers in laboratory and classroom instruction.
The combination of science and law that is a substantial portion of the course is learning the proper way to use the scientific aspects of the the testing procedure to benefit our clients in the courtroom. Proper cross-examination of the Government's expert witness, along with effectively utilizing the defense expert to help the jury understand the process, and errors that could occur during the testing and reporting of BAC results.
Fresno DUI enforcement is once of the strictest in the nation, however, there are very few DUI lawyers who have completed the necessary courses to properly evaluate and if necessary perform an effective trial on the DUI Defendants behalf.
If you have been accused of DUI in Fresno or the nearby counties, you have a choice of whether to perform a breath or blood test. If you have chosen a blood test, the determination of your Blood Alcohol Content will be occur by analyzing your blood utilizing Gas Chromatography. There are various methods of chromatography that could be utilized depending on the practices of the particular laboratory that in contracted to perform the analysis.
Direct Inject Single Column / Packed Column: There are still laboratories using this method. It is outdated technology that is still used by at least one local laboratory.
Head Space Capillary Column: This utilizes modern methods of a longer, thinner, capillary column to perform the molecular separation and elution of molecules. They may use Single or Dual Column analysis techniques. Dual column should utilize different column to show that the actual elution of the ethyl alcohol molecule in both machines is consistent with the known elution time of the ethyl alcohol molecule and to guard against co-elution.
High Performance Liquid Chromatography: This method is more appropriate for the prescription drug DUI cases, as HPLC is better at identifying the retention time and characteristics of prescription drugs.
Mass Spectrometry: Commonly used in tandem with HPLC and GC machines is an important analytic tool for identifying what molecules actually exited the column at a particular time.
When retaining a lawyer for your alcohol or drug DUI defense, make sure they understand the necessary methods of analysis.