DPP v Spurrier
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 21 July 1999 |
| Date | 21 July 1999 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Queen's Bench Divisional Court
Before Lord Justice Simon Brown and Mr Justice Newman
Criminal evidence - breath specimen device - rebutting presumption of reliability of - expert evidence not essential
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court so held when dismissing an appeal by way of case stated by the prosecution against the dismissal by Birmingham Justices on December 11, 1998 of a charge Lynne Spurrier of driving a motor vehicle when the proportion of alcohol in her breath exceeded the prescribed limit, contrary to section 5(1) of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
Mr Simon J Ward for for the appellant; Mr David Seconde for the prosecution.
MR JUSTICE NEWMAN said that the respondent was stopped by police at 11.45am. She displayed no signs of erratic driving, was not unsteady on her feet and her eyes were not glazed.
However, her breath smelt of alcohol and a roadside breath test proved positive. A further Lion Intoximeter reading of her breath specimen was over four times the prescribed limit.
The justices found that the respondent had not consumed alcohol between the time she was stopped and 11.30pm the previous night, that the amount she claimed to have consumed, two cans of lager and a quarter of a bottle of whisky, together with the time elapsed since the last consumption, the absence of observable signs of intoxication, her rational co-operative behaviour and previous good character was not compatible with the high reading of the Intoximeter, that in those circumstances the Intoximeter reading was unreliable and there was no need for expert or technical evidence to rebut the statutory presumption under section 10(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1985.
His Lordship said that the decision to acquit the respondent was not one that no reasonable bench could have made. The justices had heard her evidence in the witness box and had reasons for attaching the weight that they did to her evidence.
To rebut the statutory presumption of reliability of the Lion Intoximeter, it was not necessary for a defendant asserting a lower consumption of alcohol than that compatible with the reading, to adduce expert evidence of the reading that would be produced by the consumption and in the circumstances claimed by the defendant.
Such a requirement would impose an evidential regime for which there was no justification in law. In many cases expert evidence such as the effect of consumption...
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DPP v Brown
...device is not as accurate as an intoximeter (Lafferty v DPP (1995) Crim. LR 429). 47In Director of Public Prosecutions v Spurrier (2000) RTR 60 Newman J pointed out that having regard to the presumption laid down in the legislation that the device is reliable, the efficient administration o......
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Table of Cases
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Challenging the Breath Testing and Breath Analysis Devices
...the weight to be given.” The answer to the question was “yes”. Appeal dismissed. 274 The Amount Said to Have Been Consumed DPP v Spurrier [2000] RTR 60, 21 July 1999, QBD (DC) Where there was no expert evidence, yet nothing to indicate why the court below had attached sufficient weight to ......