Bad Blood Test Issues

Words of Advice if You Get Arrested for DWI

Mimi Coffey Words to Those Accused of DWI: If you get arrested for DWI please do yourself a favor: 1. Write out a 10 page autobiography of yourself (a recent Harvard grad told me his high school forced him to do it and it helped him fill out a successful application to Harvard). Focus on your achievements, what makes you shine above and beyond others, your contributions to society. 2. Pick out ten pictures that define your life (kids, being a little league coach, a wedding pic) and buy a mini photo album and make a pictorial storybook that highlights your life(or go to shutterfly.com and make a photo book with your explanations and narrations or places like Walmart do this too). 3. Write out on paper the two biggest challenges in your life and what you did to get over them. Detail how long it’s been since then and how you now look back at those challenges and take pride in overcoming them and the positive it brought forth. 4. Ask 3 people to writ

Is Blood Really The Gold Standard?

People think DWI blood tests are 100% accurate. Yet this is not true. People assume that a blood score is like DNA evidence- irrefutable. Once again, this is not true. People give up hope and resolve to plead guilty or no contest to their DWI thinking it is impossible to win. This is sadly not true. I was abhorred when a Houston blood expert (Ph.D in chemistry and former state lab forensic scientist) explained to me that if the lab tech accidentally pipettes one quarter of an extra drop into the test tube the score can be .07 too high! I was equally mortified when I learned that many results come from labs that do not properly validate their machines. A result is only as good as its measurements. These measurements must be properly tested (lower limit of detection, etc.) before one can rely on them. In June of 2023 I will be spending a week in a university gas chromatography lab teaching other lawyers about the issues with testing. This will be my second time in this particular lab la

The Biggest Misconception in a DWI

The biggest misconception in a DWI is to correlate a single bad driving behavior with guilt in a DWI. Whether it be a jerk (failure to maintain a single lane), accident (losing control and hitting something like a curb, pole, or another car), or stopping too long at a stop light, this may very well be evidence of driver inattention unrelated to intoxication. I have analyzed thousands of DWI cases and have tried over 300. What I typically find is a prosecutor who argues that the driving behavior which so often happens due to driver inattention be argued as clear evidence that a person is intoxicated. This is simply not fact. The facts are that every day drivers commit these violations due to distraction, inattention, fatigue or a host of other factors. Accidents are so common that the law mandates a driver operate a motor vehicle on our public roads with liability insurance. The mere fact that a driver commits these with alcohol or a substance (medication, drugs, caffeine, etc.) in

Mimi Coffey | Attorney at Law

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