DPP v Brown. DPP v Teixeira
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 16 November 2001 |
| Date | 16 November 2001 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Queen's Bench Divisional Court
Before Lord Justice Pill and Mr Justice Cresswell
Crime - intoximeter working properly - evidence required to rebut - Road TRaffic Act 1988 Section 5 - Road Traffice Offenders Act 1988 Section 15 (2)
A magistrate should not treat the presumption that an Intoximeter was working properly as rebutted by general evidence that it did not seem to meet prescribed standards but rather he should consider whether evidence capable of rebutting the presumption of reliability had been adduced relating to a particular fault relevant to the issues in the case.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held in allowing prosecution appeals against acquittals by (i) Waltham Forest Justices on May 15, 2001 of Andrew Brown of drink driving contrary to section 5 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 and (ii) Kingston upon Thames Justices on June 27, 2001 of Jose Teixeira of drink driving.
Each defendant had failed police station Intoximeter tests. Later, experts had visited the respective police stations and had tested the machines by swilling alcohol without swallowing it and then using the machines. In some circumstances, the machines proved able to register breath alcohol when they should have detected only mouth alcohol.
Mr Richard Whittam for the prosecution; Mr Francis Gilbert for Mr Brown; Mr Keith Hadrill for Mr Teixeira.
LORD JUSTICE PILL said that it was not possible for the justices to reason, as they did in Brown, that, because the device had not met required specification standards, it was therefore defective in its material function and unreliable.
Nor could the magistrates in Teixeira conclude that, because, the device was not functioning to the same standard as the device approved by the Home...
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