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would have it, he was stopped in a roadblock and asked to blow into a breathalyser. Of course, he was found to be over the legal limit, so he was promptly arrested and taken to the police station, where he was charged and then told to sit on a bench in the charge office. A blood sample was taken from him, and he sat waiting. When no one seemed to take any notice of him, and still in possession of his car keys, he eventually decided to sneak out and go home.
    The man jumped into his car and drove off – straight into another roadblock! This time he decided not to stop, and an exciting chase ensued. He was rearrested and charged for a second time that evening, and a second blood sample was taken. Both blood samples were taken within the statutory two-hour interval after the first commission of the crime.
    The two test results were poles apart, and the magistrate was not prepared to guess which was the correct reading. Theoretically, the two samples should have been identical, but because of the way the blood samples were taken, there were discrepancies and there was doubt. The young man was acquitted.
    Over that time, I continued, unabated, defending people charged with drunken driving. The prosecuting authorities found it almost impossible to achieve a conviction using this flawed system. I discovered that the state would never admit that it was wrong. They would use tactics that included counter-arguments, personal criticism and throwing in irrelevant curve balls in an attempt to avoid the real issue at hand – namely that of taking samples correctly.
    These times, for me, were not about game-playing. Drunken driving is very serious, and can lead to great tragedy. By not being able to prosecute effectively, one can argue that the state, in a sense, had blood on its hands.
    It is interesting to know that alcohol can also form in the body through other means. On 28 February 1975, a great tragedy occurredwhen a London underground train crashed into a dead end in an unused section of the tube system at Moorgate. Forty-two passengers and the driver were killed. The accident site was a mangled mess, and it took several days before the body of the driver was extricated from the wreckage. At the post-mortem, his blood alcohol was found to be high. It was only after a substantial effort by forensic analyst Janet Corry that it was discovered that the alcohol in the driver’s body had formed during the process of decomposition. This is the same process that occurs when bacteria or fungi get into a blood sample and convert the sugar in the blood into alcohol.
    The explanation that alcohol has formed naturally in the blood is often offered by lawyers in cases where their clients have been killed in road accidents, but it is only a valid defence in cases where there are obvious signs of decomposition. In most other cases, the post-mortems are conducted within a time period that would not allow for alcohol to be formed naturally, as occurred with the train driver at Moorgate.
    This is particularly significant for insurance companies. Many companies will refuse to pay death benefits if the driver of the car is over the legal blood alcohol limit. This often results in great hardship for those left behind, but there is no doubt that the devastating effects of alcohol on our roads should be combated by all available means: insurers should not be expected to pay for the damage caused by the hordes of reckless, inebriated drivers.
    It took about six years for the state to see the light. Eventually, it adopted more scientifically accurate methods of collecting blood samples from drunken drivers that would guarantee a sterile sample. This was not without its teething problems, but the system that I recommended is now in place and the blood alcohol cases are tried fairly and in a more scientifically reliable manner. I have not given evidence in a drunken-driving case in many years.
    These were exciting times and interesting years. At one point,