A Richland County circuit court ruling, if upheld on appeal, could put the brakes on thousands of pending DUI cases statewide, defense lawyers say.

Last week, Richland County Circuit Court Judge G. Thomas Cooper threw out the breath test results in a nonfatal DUI case, putting the trial on hold. Cooper ruled the county was not keeping maintenance records on its DataMaster breathalyzer machines at the county jail.

The scope of Cooper’s ruling is in dispute.

Law enforcement officials don’t expect the ruling to make much of a dent outside Richland County, where about 800 cases are made each year against people suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

But prosecutors will ask the state Court of Appeals to review the ruling. The appellate court will decide if the lower-court ruling applies only to Richland County or could affect other pending DUI cases in the state.

Those prosecutors also plan to ask the Richland County jail to change the way it keeps records on the breath machines it uses to test for DUI.

Under a 2001 state law, both local agencies and the State Law Enforcement Division are required to keep detailed records.

There are 160 DataMaster machines at 122 jails and police departments statewide. SLED is responsible for maintenance.

“SLED has shrouded it in secrecy,” said longtime North Augusta defense lawyer Jim Huff. “We’ve got a box that we don’t get to look into.”

Defense lawyers contend SLED and some local agencies don’t keep detailed records on breakdowns and other malfunctions with DataMaster machines.

That’s important, they say, because machines that routinely malfunction or are poorly maintained can give false blood-alcohol readings.

SLED Chief Robert Stewart says the machines are reliable, citing a 1998 study commissioned by the Legislature. Maintenance records are available online to the public and attorneys, he said.

“We get attacked on the DataMaster issue constantly,” Stewart said. “There are too many people who get killed by drunk drivers, and we’re not going to back off from a strong program.”

Defense attorneys acknowledge that SLED posts maintenance records online. But they say the records are not detailed and do not reflect all potential problems with the machines.

More than 2,000 people were killed in alcohol-related crashes in South Carolina from 2000 through 2003, according to the state chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The state has ranked third nationally in alcohol-related deaths per capita.

COOPER’S RULING

Columbia defense lawyer Joe McCulloch, who sought the ruling from Cooper, contends it could affect every pending DUI case in the state since 2001 in which the machines were used.

McCulloch estimated the affected cases could be as high as several thousand, though he couldn’t provide a precise figure.

“Could this have a dramatic effect? Yes,” he said. “Will it? I don’t know. ... But it’s pretty clear that SLED is not keeping detailed records at any level.”

Richland County Solicitor Barney Giese said Cooper’s ruling has nothing to do with SLED. But one of his assistant solicitors said otherwise during the hearing. Giese said Cooper found only that the Richland County jail wasn’t keeping any maintenance records on its two machines.

Still, Giese said he plans to appeal the ruling to the S.C. Court of Appeals, instruct jail officials to start keeping maintenance records and alert the county’s chief magistrate about the case.

Giese said Cooper’s ruling is not immediately binding on any other judge in the state. He said he will not recommend that DUI cases in the county be delayed pending the appeal.

“I wouldn’t be appealing it if I didn’t think we were right on the law,” said Giese, president of the S.C. Solicitors Association.

Giese’s deputy solicitor, John Meadors, said Cooper’s ruling, if upheld on appeal, could affect other DUI cases statewide if breath tests were given at sites where no maintenance records were kept on machines.

Cooper declined comment when contacted by The State to clarify the intent of his ruling.

There were about 24,000 DUI arrests statewide in 2002 and 2003, SLED records show; figures for 2001 and last year were unavailable. There were about 1,600 DUI arrests in Richland County and about 1,100 in Lexington County those two years.

It is unknown precisely how many of the statewide or local arrests involved breath tests; defendants can refuse to take the tests.

Cooper’s ruling involved the case of Ronald Landon, 38, of Columbia, who is charged with second-offense DUI. He was arrested after a rear-end collision about 8:30 a.m. Dec. 22, 2002, on Hard Scrabble Road in Richland County, according to court records.

When arrested, Landon smelled of alcohol and appeared to have red eyes and a pale face, the state Highway Patrol said.

Landon, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge, said in court papers he was not impaired when arrested about 10 a.m. that day. He said he had been out all night dancing but quit drinking about eight hours before his arrest.

Landon declined comment last week.

MACHINE MELTDOWNS

Landon had a blood-alcohol content of .14 percent after blowing into DataMaster machine No. 881274 at the Richland County jail, court records said. State law says anyone with a percentage of .08 or higher is intoxicated. When Landon was arrested, the standard was .10 percent or higher.

That machine automatically shut itself down a total of five times that year, including twice on Dec. 30, 2002 — eight days after Landon’s accident, according to SLED maintenance records examined by The State newspaper.

In comparison, the same machine shut itself down a total of 64 times in 1992.

DataMasters have 18 internal error codes that automatically shut the machines down when problems arise, SLED said. That information is conveyed electronically to SLED’s database.

But McCulloch said many problems are not recorded by the machines, or being properly logged by either the testing site or SLED. This violates the 2001 state law, he said. McCulloch pointed out that SLED’S written maintenance form has no space for an explanation of the problem.

“It would be similar to when the (Ford) Pintos exploded in flames, and the officers get all these reports ... but point out only ‘these mishaps,’” said defense lawyer Huff.

Similar record-keeping problems in Arizona resulted in nearly 1,400 breath tests being thrown out of court, McCulloch said.

McCulloch and Huff said they believe SLED has modified the DataMaster machines over the years but won’t let defense experts examine their software.

Those modifications could be masking problems instead of correcting them, McCulloch said. That could be why the Richland County machine in question shut itself down so many more times in 1992 than 2002, he said.

DEFENSE ATTACKS

Defense lawyers are focusing more attention on the machines after recent changes in state law making it illegal to drink and drive with a blood-alcohol level of at least .08 percent, said Tracy Tisdale, executive director of MADD’s S.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen this as a common level of attack,” she said. “(But) we believe that DataMasters are based on scientific fact.”

Even before last week’s ruling, many officers feared machine results would be thrown out of court, said Rhonda Patterson, a lawyer with the S.C. Commission on Prosecution Coordination. As a result, they have charged offenders under an older DUI law that is less dependent on the test.

“(Defense lawyers) are hellbent on proving the DataMaster is not reliable,” she said.

Longtime Anderson defense lawyer Ronnie Cole estimates at least 15 percent of the state’s machines are unreliable. He believes citizens shouldn’t trust SLED’s maintenance records.

“The argument that everything is in SLED’s database is ridiculous,” he said.

Reach Brundrett at (803) 771-8484 or rbrundrett@thestate.com.