My CCL judge continued a defendant on probation this morning (convicted in March of FV Assault, reoffends in May with another FV Assault plus drinking, BUT crops have to get planted, so let's modify and extend...) and ordered a "SCRAM" device which purportedly senses alcohol in the individual at any level and reports.

Has anyone used it? Know anything about it? Anything I should know before this guy claims it doesn't know what it's beeping about?

Lisa L. Peterson
Nolan County Attorney

You might start here: Scram

We've been using it for about the last two years. Our judges use it as both a condition of bond and, in alcohol related offenses, as a condition of community supervision.

With respect to its use as a probation condition, we have the defendant and his attorney sign a stipulation at the time of the plea to cover admissibility problems of the device (and its data) at the time of any eventual revocation hearing.

If you want a copy of the stipulation, just shoot me an e-mail.

Robert DuBoise

There have been Frye hearings in about 20 states, only one bad decision but it was reversed a month ago. The vendor has briefs and experts availible. Let me know diretly if you don't get a prompt resonse from them. A good friend of mine is their general counsel and I can grease those wheels. The vendor should be able to send e-mail data directly to your probation office. Sometimes the claim is made that rum cake or skin lotion can cause false positives, but the device measures every 20 minutes and will show a coonsumption type rise and fall. That eliminates the stupid claims. Also the device registers rises and falls in body temp, so it can tell if bubba trys to use wool socks to mask his drinking. Contact your vendor with questions they have pretty good answers and like you they have seen it all before.

What is the monthly fee charged to a probationer for the use of such a device? Does the probation department neeed to buy these or does the defendant deal directly with the company as in an interlcok device?

Ken,

I think ours are running $10-$12 PER DAY
...The defendant is completely responsible and signs the agreement with the provider, so probation has no exposure..There is also some initial expense to the defendant, I think in the neighborhood of $200.00...Expensive, but hey, if they want out of jail......It has been working well on one guy where it is a bond condition in a double Intox Manslaughter....

We have our first two in use at this time. One probationer has already been pulled back into Ct. to account for alcohol readings. The distributor was very helpful with providing supporting documentation.

My thanks to all of you. Courtesy of Taylor County, he is now wearing a SCRAM monitor, and we will see what happens...

Lisa L. Peterson
Nolan County Attorney