People v. Bobczyk
| Decision Date | 09 May 1951 |
| Docket Number | Gen. No. 45294 |
| Citation | 99 N.E.2d 567,343 Ill.App. 504 |
| Parties | PEOPLE v. BOBCZYK. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Francis T. McCurrie, Public Defender of Cook County, Gerald W. Getty, Asst. Public Defender, Chicago, for plaintiff in error.
John S. Boyle, State's Atty. of Cook County, William J. McGah, Jr., John T. Gallagher, Rudolph L. Janega, Arthur Manning, and Isadore Rosin, Assts. State's Atty., all of Chicago, for defendant in error.
Plaintiff in error, Billy Bobczyk, hereinafter called defendant, was charged with driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor, in violation of Paragraph 144, chapter 95 1/2, Motor Vehicle Act, Ill.Rev.Stats.1949, State Bar Edition. Trial by the court without a jury resulted in a finding of guilty and judgment was entered accordingly. Defendant appeals.
About 5:10 o'clock p. m. on October 23, 1949, automobiles driven by Joseph Sierminski and defendant collided at the intersection of Ashland Avenue and Superior Street in the City of Chicago. Shortly after the collision two City police officers appeared at the scene of the accident.
According to the testimony of the police officers and Sierminski, defendant's breath smelled of alcohol, his speech was incoherent, and he swayed while walking.
About 6:45 p. m. of the same evening defendant was taken by the police to the Chicago Police Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory where he voluntarily submitted to a test on the Harger Drunkometer, a device used to test the alcoholic content of a subject's breath. Daniel T. Dragel, Evidence Evaluator at the Crime Detection Laboratory, who operated the Drunkometer, testified that the test applied to the defendant disclosed that he had a concentration of alcohol in the blood of .30 per cent, and that in his opinion defendant was under the influence of alcohol at the time of his arrest. The police officers who arrested defendant gave similar opinions.
Defendant testified that before the collision he drank two glasses of beer; that he had not consumed any other alcoholic beverages during that day; that when he was taken to the Crime Detection Laboratory he was not informed of the purpose of the breath test, nor was he told by Dragel or the police officers that he need not consent to the test; and that upon his refusal he was advised that the test was 'according to law.'
Defendant contends that the trial court erred in permitting the introduction of evidence concerning the Drunkometer test and the result shown thereby, on the ground that the Drunkometer has not received general scientific recognition as an accurate index of the amount of alcohol in the blood.
The underlying theory and operation of the Drunkometer was explained in great detail by the State's witnesses, Dr. R. N. Harger, the inventor, Dr. Clarence Muehlberger, and Dragel, a graduate chemist and employee of the City Police Department for fifteen years.
In making the test it appears that the subject inflates a small balloon. The exhaled breath of the subject trapped in the balloon is then allowed to pass through a reaction chamber which contains measured amounts of potassium permanganate and sulphuric acid. When a certain amount of alcohol passes through the solution it causes a change in the color of the chemicals. The concentration of alcohol in the breath can be computed from the amount of breath required to cause the chemical reaction, and from this the alcoholic content of the subject's blood. There is two thousand times as much alcohol in a given amount of blood as there is in a like amount of the breath of the same subject.
Dragel testified that he had taken courses in chemical tests for intoxication at Northwestern University under the supervision and instruction of Dr. Harger, Dr. Clarence Muehlberger and Dr. Heise, Chairman of the Committee of the American Medical Association, to study chemical tests for intoxication; that in the past two years he has conducted more than five hundred chemical tests for intoxication; and that the percentage of alcohol in the blood is not the same in each person after drinking the same amount of alcohol, for the reason that some persons will oxide alcohol slowly and absorb it rapidly, and others will absorb it slowly and oxidize it rapidly, thus the amount of alcohol accumulated in the blood stream will vary from time to time after consumption. The witness further testified that the Drunkometer test applied to defendant indicated the accumulation in his body of alcohol equivalent to that of about ten ounces of one-hundred-proof whiskey or in ten full bottles of beer.
Dr. R. N. Harger, Professor of Biochemistry and Toxicology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, testified that for several years he had been consultant on poisons for the Indiana State Board of Health; that for the past twenty-five years he had conducted research on toxicology and alcohol; that in approximately one thousand tests he has taken blood and breath of the subject at the same time; that he has conducted thousands of breath tests and he found that by means of the breath method he can accurately predict the percentage of alcohol in the blood and that all persons would be under the influence of alcohol when the alcoholic blood content is above .15 per cent.
Dr. Clarence...
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Williams v. State
...in medical profession regarding breath-alcohol testing devices goes to weight of testimony not its admissibility); People v. Bobczyk, 343 Ill.App. 504, 99 N.E.2d 567 (1951)(witness may testify as to opinion regarding objective symptoms commonly associated with alcohol impairment even though......
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People v. Barbara
...See, e. g., how courts handled disputed status of Breathalyzer. State v. Olivas, 77 Ariz. 118, 267 P.2d 893 (1954); People v. Bobczyk, 343 Ill.App. 504, 99 N.E.2d 567 (1951).One federal district court recommended still another approach:"(A) polygraph examiner, having satisfied a particular ......
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Reed v. State
...developed, especially in regard to the accuracy of the breath tests." Kaplan, Supra, 10 Wayne L.Rev. at 405-06. In People v. Bobczyk, 343 Ill.App. 504, 99 N.E.2d 567 (1951), the defendant "contend(ed) that the trial court erred in permitting the introduction of evidence concerning the (Harg......
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United States v. Ridling
...unanimity among the profession was held to affect only the weight and not the admissibility of evidence. See also People v. Bobczyk, 343 Ill.App. 504, 99 N.E.2d 567 (1957); People v. Williams, 164 Cal.2d Supp. 858, 331 P.2d 251 3 "General scientific acceptance" is a proper condition for tak......