The Orange County Crime Lab says it has found another error in testing blood-alcohol levels, just two weeks after acknowledging a mistake that could affect dozens of DUI cases.
According to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, cases and results of 100 people will be affected with the latest mistake. The lab found a tiny calibration error of .001 percent in a testing machine.
The error was found during an audit prompted by the discovery more than two weeks ago that another machine had churned out inaccurate results for months. The lab director says that error happened when the lab calibrated one of the machines and failed to input a data point in the software, throwing off the results by .003 percentage points.
The district attorney sent letters to 900 people with pending cases and to those already convicted of a DUI since May.
The sheriff's department says the latest mistake will increase the blood-alcohol level in nine cases to above the legal limit of .08 percent.
Defense attorneys say they're revisiting some of their cases, and they believe these mistakes at the crime lab are going to leave juries having a lot of doubts.
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