I am prosecuting an overweight defendant, he is about 5'9 275lbs. No breath or blood, but he looks bad on his one leg stand and walk and turn tests. The defense attorney has already informed me of his defense that they test aren't validated for people over 65 or 50 lbs or more overweight.

I've been looking through the 2004 NHTSA instructor's manual on SFSTs and I can't seem to find those restrictions anywhere. I did some further research and read that the overweight language was in the NHTSA manual at one time, but has been removed.

I would like to know what the current standards are on SFSTs with regard to people who are overweight. I would like to know when the language regarding overweight people performing SFSTs was put into the manual and when taken out, and why it was taken out, if that is possible. Also any help in defending the SFSTs from attacks regarding their being administered to overweight individuals. Any help is appreciated.

SFST Instructor here. I'll send you some info via private message later on, should help with what you are needing.

Sent you a message..

In the university validation studies all persons over 65 or more than 50 pounds overweight were deliberately excluded. The best answer I have recieved is liability concerns with the large and the old (typical civil lawyer paranoia).

So you can't introduce the validation studies on OLS and WAT. What you weren't doing that anyway? Well there you go. A easy solution is to call a good SFST instuctor to the stand to explain this to the jury. If you can't find one of those in your jurisdiction let me know and I will try to help.