Source: https://www.drunk-driving.com/dui-dwi-publications/dui-field-sobriety-testing-in-illinois
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 19:05:13+00:00

Document:
In People v. Bostelman (2d Dist. 2001) 2-00-0850, the Second District Appellate Court was called upon to decide whether field sobriety tests were admissible in the absence of evidence that the tests were generally acceptable under scientific principles or in the particular field in which they belong, as recognized by Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013, 1014 (D.C. Cir. 1923).
, and therefore are not subject to attack under Fyre principles.
given by the officer in Bostelman, namely the alphabet test and count backwards test, have never been validated as reliable indicators of intoxication. The three remaining tests in Bostelman, i.e., the One-Leg Stand test, the Walk-and-Turn test, and the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test have only been validated as reliable indicators of intoxication when they are properly administered and properly scored in strict compliance with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) standards. According to NHTSA, the failure of an officer to comply with proper administration and scoring compromises the validity of these tests entirely. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration DWI Detention and Standardized Field Sobriety Testing Student Manual, Section VIII, 2000, AVA 20839-BBOINA, National Technical Information Service, Washington, D.C. 2000.
In the late 1970's, NHTSA was called upon to develop a battery of reliable standardized field sobriety tests to aid in the detection of drunk drivers. The result was the One-Leg Stand test, the Walk-and-Turn test, and the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test. According to NHTSA, laboratory research revealed that the One-Legged stand test was 65% accurate in identifying subjects whose blood alcohol concentrations were 0.10 or higher, the Walk-and Turn was 68% accurate, and the HGN was 77% accurate. A large scale field valuation study was then performed in 1982 and 1983.
, Section VIII Page 11 (1995).
, as suggested by the Bostelman decision, then why is the error rate as high as the 35% reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration?
The problem with the Bostelman decision rests truly not with the Court, but with the record on appeal upon which the Court was required to rule. The Bostelman appeal centered on the defendant's claim that his trial counsel was ineffective for not seeking to exclude, as lacking foundation, the arresting officer's testimony concerning the field sobriety tests defendant underwent and the arresting officers subsequent opinion concerning defendant's state of intoxication.
The recitation of the trial court proceedings by the Bostelman court suggests that the types of tests given and the procedures employed by the officer were virtually uncontested by his trial attorney. No evidence was introduced about the fallibility of field sobriety testing or about the manner in which these tests were administered. Had the record contained evidence gleaned from field sobriety student manuals, published scientific studies or testimony from experts on field sobriety testing, perhaps the Bostelman Court would have rendered a different decision.
Two recent decisions from other jurisdictions did have adequate records on appeal with which to rule regarding the admissibility of so-called field sobriety tests; State of Ohio v. Homan (2000) 89 Ohio St. 3d 421 and U.S. v. Horn (2002 U.S. Dist. Ct. Maryland) 00-946-PWG.
Unlike Bostelman, the Supreme Court of Ohio acknowledged that experts in the areas of drunk driving apprehension, prosecution and defense all appear to agree that the reliability of field sobriety test results does indeed turn upon the degree to which police comply with standardized testing procedures.
The NHTSA concluded that field sobriety tests are an effective means of detecting legal intoxication only when, the tests are administered in the prescribed, standardized manner, . . . the standardized clues are used to assess the suspect's performance [,and] . . . the standardized criteria are employed to interpret that performance.
It would seem that if, as Bostelman implicitly suggests, performing sobriety tests is simple, then an officers ability to administer and score the tests in a standardized manner should be equally as simple. Requiring the use of validated, standardized field sobriety testing in Illinois in order to avoid the possibility of erroneous arrests for drunk driving is a concept whose time has arrived, especially in light of the heightened penalties that have been attached to drunk driving convictions.
The Bostelman decision actually took a step backwards. Whereas prior caselaw had suggested that the officer must receive formal training in the administration of field sobriety tests (People v. Sides 199 Ill. App. 3e 203 (1990)), the Bostelman court stated that no such training is necessary. Rather, Bostelman states that so fundamental are such exercises of balance, coordination, and basic recognition to the activity of the average person that even a layperson is competent to testify regarding a person's intoxication from alcohol, because such observations are within the competence of all adults of normal experience,' (citing to) People v. Workman, 312 Ill. App. 3d 305, 310 (2000).
The devoid record presented to the Bostelman court left it uninformed on the science behind SFSTs, and left the court in the untenuous position of either affirming the trial court's guilty verdict or establishing a far-reaching decision in DUI cases in Illinois in the face of a defendant who did virtually nothing to prove that the tests given to him were somehow unfair or improperly administered and scored.
to decide whether the evidence is reliable and admissible. The court, however, is limited in its ability to do so by the quantitative and qualitative nature of the evidence produced by the parties, whatever research the court may do, and any help it may derive from courts that have addressed the issue before it. This process unavoidably takes place on a continuum, and a court faced with the present task of deciding the admissibility of scientific evidence must exercise care to consider whether new developments or evidence require a reevaluation of the conclusions previously reached by courts that did not have the benefit of the more recent information. In short, neither science and technology may rest on past accomplishments  nor may the courts.
U.S. v. Horn, id at p. 12-13 fn. 15.
If otherwise admissible, the police officer may give lay opinion testimony that the defendant was Driving Under the Influence, but he may not bolster the testimony by reference to any scientific, technical or specialized information learned from law enforcement or traffic safety instruction. U.S. v. Horn, id at pp. 3-5.
In many respects, Horn follows Bostelman's theory that a police officer may testify (just as any other layperson) that someone is under the influence of alcohol. Horn, however, makes clear that the police officer is not to be misrepresented to the jury or judge as some kind of expert, unless the government establishes that he is otherwise so qualified. Horn also recognizes the prejudice to the defendant that accompanies testimony regarding non-validated and non-standardized field sobriety testing by prohibiting non-standardized tests from being introduced into evidence.
The Horn ruling is based upon and supported by a variety of scientific and technical resources, which will be further discussed in this article.
. DOT-HS-802-424, National Technical Information Service, Washington, D.C. (1977). This is the study which found the HGN 77% accurate, the One-Leg Stand 65% accurate, and the Walk-and-Turn test 68% accurate in detecting impaired drivers.
recommended the use of the present three test SFST battery. Tharp V, Burns M and Moskowitz H, DOT-HS805-864. National Technical Information Service, Washington, D.C., 1981.
In 1982, a field evaluation of the three SFSTs was begun, where battery-trained police officers recorded data on 1,506 drivers stopped for suspicion of DWI', as well as a review of data recorded on an additional 1,000 drivers stopped for DWI in other states.
, U.S. Department of Transportation, NHTSA, D.O.T. HS-806-475 (Sept. 1983 NHTSA Technical Note). This study reported that the HGN test was 82% accurate, the One-Leg Stand 78% accurate and the Walk-and-Turn 83% accurate in the detection of DWI offenders.
The authors of the 1983 report noted that there were significant reasons to be extremely cautious about the data collected and the conclusions drawn regarding the effectiveness of the field sobriety tests that were used. First, officers were not randomly assigned to different groups, so outcomes may have been affected by selection and assignment bias. Second, and most important, in the great majority of cases the drivers were given portable breath tests prior to the arrest decision, so the officers evaluation of the field sobriety tests may have been affected by this knowledge of the drivers reported alcohol concentrations prior to the arrest decision having been made.
states the manual. The officer is instructed to time the One-Leg-Stand Test and to terminate it after the end of the count by the suspect or after 30 seconds, if the person counts slowly.
Since 1984, the essential ingredients of Standardized Field Sobriety Testing has remained unchanged. That is, field sobriety tests are only valid when properly administered and properly scored in strict compliance with NHTSA standards. The reason for this is obvious - the tests measure not just balance and coordination, as noted in Bostelman, but they also measure a person's ability to follow instructions exactly, even when their balance is unimpaired from alcohol.
, or they are critical of the reported accuracy of the tests in gauging impairment.
In a study written by Dr. Spurgeon Cole, Ph.D., Dr. Cole is highly critical of the reliability of the SFSTs when used to prove impairment or alcohol levels. In Field Sobriety Tests: Are they designed for Failure?
the accepted reliability coefficient for standardized clinical tests is .85 or higher, yet the reliability coefficients for the SFSTs as reported in the NHTSA studies, ranged from .61 to .72 for the individual tests and .77 for individuals that were tested on two different occasions while dosed to the exact same BAC. More alarming, inter-rater reliability rates (where different officers score each subject) ranged from .34 to .60, with an over-all rate of .57.
[The SFSTs] must be held to the same standards the scientific community would expect of any reliable and valid test of behavior. This study brings the validity of field sobriety tests into question. If law enforcement officials and the courts wish to continue to use field sobriety tests as evidence of driving impairment, then further study needs to be conducted addressing the direct relationship of performance on these and other tests with driving. To date, research has concentrated on the relationship between test performance and BAC and officers' perception of impairment. This study indicates that these perceptions may be faulty.
, Science and Justice 2001, Vol 41: pp 113-116, published by the Forensic Science Society, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus test was studied under clinical experimentation. The authors concluded that the HGN has a high baseline error and a dose/response relationship that varies greatly depending upon whether the subjects BAC concentration was rising or falling. Further, the officers noted that videotapes recorded by cameras in police vehicles revealed that police officers rarely comply with the minimum requirements of the nystagmus examination procedures for which they were trained and certified.
The Science and Justice study further stated that fatigue testing determined that subjects had distinct nystagmus in one or both eyes after being awake for an average of 11.2 hours. Distinct nystagmus was noted in 55% of the group after being awake an average of 24.5 hours. In 52 videotapes of officers who arrested persons for Driving Under the Influence, only one officer conducted the HGN test in a manner consistent with the approved procedures. The study stated that the HGN test has routinely been applied in situations where a high incidence of false positives is to be expected.
Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine (2001) Vol. 8: pp 57-65.
American Psychologist 1070 (Oct. 1983) a series of experiments performed at Rutgers University's Alcohol Behavior Research Laboratory to test the ability of social drinkers, bartenders and police officers' abilities to estimate the sobriety of individuals was reported. Each group was charged with reliably judging an individual's intoxication. All three subject groups  the social drinkers, the bartenders, and the police officers  correctly judged the subjects level of intoxication only 25 percent of the time.
these tests without laying a proper foundation. State v. Ferrer 23 P.3d 744 (Hawaii Ct. App. 2001).
The Bostelman decision perpetuates an urban myth that sobriety tests any sobriety tests whether nonvalidated or improperly administered by a police officer  are reliable indicators of intoxication. This decision passes to the jury the unenviable task of weighing upon the validity and reliability of field sobriety tests in the vacuum of the jury room. Had the Bostelman court been given the information that was received into the record by the Homan court or the Horn court, perhaps their decision would have been different.
Defense counsel would be well advised to do their homework and be well prepared when defending a client charged with Driving Under the Influence when the testimony rests upon questionable field sobriety exercises or improperly administered or improperly scored Field Sobriety Tests. Further, even when performed properly, counsel should be prepared to establish that these tests are not foolproof, and have been the subject of criticism in the legal, scientific and medical communities.
Donald J. Ramsell is the founding Director of Ramsell & Associates, L.L.C. in Wheaton, Illinois. His firm has defended over 7,000 DUI cases since 1986. Recently, Donald was certified as a field Sobriety Testing Instructor using NHTSA Standards.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.