An Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that the results of an alcohol breath test given to a woman wearing a stainless steel stud in her pierced tongue is inadmissible in court. That’s because the stud is a foreign object in her mouth. State law specifically prohibits anyone from having any foreign object in the mouth within twenty minutes before the time a breath sample is taken.
Spokespersons for the Indiana State Police and the Indianapolis Police Department refuse to reveal how their officers handle breath tests involving people with tongue studs. It would appear that law enforcement officers throughout the state have routinely been conducting breath tests in violation of the law and using the invalid results to obtain convictions.
It‘s very important to reduce drunk driving, but not at the expensive of violating the law to do so.
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