So I have this court which is about to refuse to allow expert testimony by a 20-year medical technologist regarding hospital-drawn BAC results. The claim is that there is no case law supporting the admissibility of enzymatic light-spectrum testing in general, or testing by the Dimension RXL instrument in particular. The judge is leaning toward accepting that argument since the technologist can't name every parameter of every test run by this device (there are hundreds), and can't rattle off the "margin of error" in an ETOH test.

I'll be searching for better law this evening but if anyone knows of a case to point me in the right direction - before 8:30 on Thursday morning - I'd sure appreciate it.

Surely you can obtain documents supporting the reliability for the instrument. You don't have to offer live testimony, as the judge may consider all sorts of evidence in deciding the admissibility. That includes documents that show studies or explain the instrument.

David,

There are only a few cases I am aware of that speaks to the admissibility of the hospital blood testing. Check out Reidweg v. State, 981 S.W>2d 399 (Tex. App. - San Antonio 1998, pdr ref'd).
Sanchez Martinez v. State, 2001 WL 1164393, *3+ (Tex.App.-Austin Oct 04, 2001) (NO. 03-00-00657-CR) & Jessup v. State, 2004 WL 2612958, *3+ (Tex.App.-Corpus Christi Nov 10, 2004) (NO. 13-02-00024-CR).

We get hospital tested results into evidence all the time but it may be that our hospital witness is more knowledgable about the way the instruments works than the one you have called. Have you checked with the hospital to see if another witness is available?