Lawrence Taylor at DUIblog (Mar. 17, via Cernovich) has got the goods on a coaching memo given by the San Diego Police Department to the technical experts they put on the stand to testify as to drivers’ blood-alcohol levels (emphasis in original memo):
You will always mix any tube with an anticoagulent [sic] 10 times (you count the inversions). The important things to remember is that you always follow the same procedure, so even though you don’t remember this particular individual, you know that you drew the person following our standard procedure.
As Taylor observes, the witnesses are instructed to testify under oath to an account calculated to help the prosecution prevail, “not as to what they actually did and what they know to be true in a specific case”.
For more on witness-coaching, see Sept. 10, 1999, Sept. 22-24, 2000, and, of course, our many entries on the famous Baron & Budd witness memo scandal.
4 Comments
I work as a trainer in a police department (dispatch and jail). I train eveyone to perform routine functions the same way each time. This is a direct result from having testified in court. If there is a written form to fill out, I instruct them to read verbatim the questions that need to be answered so in future incidents there is no question in their mind as to what they said. This is much like reading thier Miranda rights straight from a card.
This reminds me of my speeding trial when the ticket issuing officer read from a crib sheet pasted in the front of his ticket book when asked to testify whether he had calibrated the radar and followed established procedures in knowing which car out of the dozens whizzing by the device was clocking. The officer even stumbled over the words when reading it and obviously didn’t know what half of what it meant as, each time the state lost a case, it had added a compensating phrase to the recital, but it was still admitted as testimony over my objections.
You know if we really had judges in this country they would throw a few defense and prosecution attorneys out of the court room.
I have no doubt justice won’t be happening much until we can resurect the genes of Roy Bean. Right or wrong, by gawd ….
I used to fly planes, I also had a checklist, and went over every item every flight. Short pauses considered, such might be reduced a bit.
He forgot to tell them to piss in the vial to make sure it’s clean first diddn’t he?
I loved my atty back in 82 when he told me how expensive it was to fight a dui case. His costs equated to obtaining a police report with their stated tests. Standing in the court room, a place he more than likly would have been due to other cases the same session. and pleading no contest.
But he was right, it cost me a fortune, his fees were but insult added to it!
The only justification I see for “crib sheets” and such is that it really is months or sometimes even YEARS later that they are asked to testify. In the meantime, they have performed similar actions hundreds or even thousands of times.
Of course, that could be solved by solving the problem of constipated courts.