SOUTH JERSEY (KYW Newsradio) — Police drug recognition experts, who evaluate if a driver is under the influence of drugs or alcohol, will now be limited in their court testimony, after a 5-2 decision by New Jersey’s top court.
When a driver is pulled over for suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, an officer trained in recognizing the symptoms of drug use is often dispatched to the scene to evaluate the suspect.
The New Jersey Supreme Court decided their training alone isn’t enough to convict someone for a DUI. “The court recognized a lot of the problems with drug recognition expert testimony, and because of these serious problems, they put up important guardrails to limit DRE testimony,” said Attorney Molly McLane, who argued the case on behalf of the state’s Office of the Public Defender.
McLane says those officers cannot testify in court with certainty whether the driver was under the influence or not. “Instead, their testimony is a lot more limited. They can only testify about correlation, that somebody is showing symptoms, and those symptoms are consistent with drug use,” she explained.
Another key component to the ruling is that officers have to make every effort to get toxicology reports or blood tests to determine if drugs are in someone’s system. McLane says there are some issues with that as well, but at least the tests provide some evidence.
“This kind of gets us to a place where we protect public safety, but also aren’t presenting junk science [and] aren’t overstating what is scientifically supportable,” she said, adding that the decision also aims to prevent as many false predictions as possible.
As the court noted, the ruling doesn’t eliminate the need for or discredit the experts, but says an officer’s opinion is more valuable when coupled with real evidence.