A BC based defense lawyer has been able to get her hands on an Abbott SoToxa, also known as the Alere DDS2, drug screening device. The only difference between the two devices is the name. They are otherwise the same machine.
After struggling to find a way to acquire the device, Kyla Lee says they were able to purchase one from a private sale. “The manufacturer still refuses to sell it to us. The official suppliers and distributors still refuse to sell it to us and we tried everything you can think of. We tried purchasing it in business names, we tried having people who were associated to us but not working at our firm try to get one. We called the manufacturer directly and just got laughed off the phone. We even reached out to distributors as far away as Australia to see whether or not they would sell it to us. And we finally found one somewhere in Europe that was being privately sold and acquired it as soon as we found it.”
Lee says they received the device earlier this summer, but they have been spending some time analyzing it and trying to figure out their thoughts on it and where things can go wrong. They had been waiting for the right moment to let the manufacturer and the government know that they have their hands on their equipment. “Feels as though it’s designed to be hand held but it’s not in fact a hand held device. And I think we’re going to see a lot of problems with police having difficulty resisting that temptation to pick it up and hold it and move it around and talk as they do with roadside breathalyzers which don’t have any limitations on being used that way.”
She says definitely has seen in the device evidence that supports the unreliability of it. “Our device has a history so we can call up every test that’s been done using the device. And there are a number of calibration and quality assurance checks that are supposed to be done routinely, there are specific cartridges for doing that. And it has failed those numerous times and they’ve had to be redone which is very concerning to me that this device so readily loses its calibration.”
Lee says it is important that groups outside of law enforcement and the government have access to these devices to see how they work. “It’s incredibly frustrating and it’s hugely damaging to requirements in our justice system like the presumption of innocence and disclosure. Our clients have the right to know as much as the police know about the investigation, as much as the prosecutors know about the investigation and that includes the science.”
Listen to the whole segment from The Jeff Andreas Show below
Photo taken from Twitter @IRPlawyer
