When the officer handed you that printed receipt with a BAC number on it, the implication was clear: the machine said so, so it must be true. But in 2017, a Gilpin County judge ruled that Intoxilyzer 9000 Instrument Certificates were inadmissible across Colorado because the state agency responsible for certifying them had left a departed director’s signature on official documents for approximately 18 months. That ruling didn’t come from a fluke. It came from litigation by Fife Luneau, P.C. attorney Danny Luneau, who represented the defendant and was then sought out by CBS Colorado and 9News to explain what the ruling meant for thousands of DUI cases statewide.
That case is why “calibration errors” aren’t just a theoretical defense talking point in Colorado. They’re a documented, adjudicated problem with a paper trail that defense attorneys can still pull and examine today. What follows is how that process works, and what it means for someone facing a DUI charge based on a breath test result.
How Colorado Certifies & Calibrates Breath Testing Machines
Colorado doesn’t leave breath testing equipment to individual police departments to maintain. Every Intoxilyzer 9000 used for evidential testing in the state is owned, repaired, calibrated, and certified by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment through its Evidential Breath Alcohol Testing program, operating under 5 CCR 1005-2. That single regulatory framework governs what counts as a valid test result in any Colorado courtroom.
The calibration standard built into that framework is specific and checkable. During a solution change stability test, the instrument must return 10 consecutive calibration readings that all fall between 0.095 and 0.105 g/210L. Every reading must hit that window. If even one falls outside it, the solution change has to be repeated before the machine can be used for evidential testing again. That’s not a vague standard; it’s a numeric threshold that either the calibration records confirm or they don’t.
The same regulation formally defines what happens when a test fails to complete. That report is called an Exception Message, and under 5 CCR 1005-2 it’s the instrument’s own documentation that something went wrong during the testing process. Exception Messages aren’t errors the police report; they’re records the machine itself generates, and they exist in the Discovery Packet that a defense attorney can request.
The Case That Put Colorado’s Breath Test Certifications on Trial
The 2017 ruling in People v. Friedlander didn’t hinge on a malfunctioning machine. It hinged on paperwork. When CDPHE’s evidential breath alcohol testing director left the agency in July 2015, the department kept using her signature on Instrument Certificates for machines certified after she was gone, for approximately 18 months. Judge David Taylor found that CDPHE had produced evidence that was “misleading, and something other than the truth,” and ruled those certificates inadmissible. Breath test results from roughly July 2015 through early 2017 were called into question statewide because the underlying certifications had the wrong signature on them. It wasn’t a single broken machine in a single county. It was a systemic documentation failure that touched every Intoxilyzer 9000 certified during that period.
Danny Luneau litigated that case. After the ruling, local television stations and news outlets contacted him directly to explain the implications. That kind of case isn’t litigated by someone who read about calibration law in a continuing education seminar. It’s litigated by someone who has spent years pulling calibration records and certification documents until a discrepancy finally breaks open in a courtroom.
A Pattern of Exposed Testing Failures in Colorado
The Gilpin County ruling wasn’t an isolated incident. Luneau also helped expose a broader problem within CDPHE’s breath testing program: a former lab technician whose signature had been used without his knowledge to certify Intoxilyzer 9000 machines across the state. That’s not a paperwork delay or a minor procedural gap. It’s a falsified certification record, and it existed in cases where people had already been convicted based on breath test results.
The exposure of testing failures extended beyond breath testing. Luneau helped uncover serious problems at the CDPHE’s state toxicology laboratory involving an analyst who had improperly handled approximately 1,700 blood samples, a failure serious enough that the lab was shut down. When he began using outdated DUI operations manuals to win cases, both the Denver Police Department and the Grand County Sheriff’s Office were compelled to rewrite their arrest procedures and operational guidance. These aren’t abstract wins. They changed how law enforcement in Denver and Grand County actually operates.
What a Calibration Problem Can Mean for Your DUI Case
When we take on a DUI case involving a breath test, one of the first things we do is request the specific records that 5 CCR 1005-2 defines and requires. That includes the Instrument Certificate for the machine used in your test, the calibration stability records, and the full Discovery Packet. Those documents have dates, readings, and signatures. They either confirm the machine was properly maintained and certified at the time of your test, or they don’t.
If calibration readings fell outside the required 0.095 to 0.105 tolerance window before your test, or if the Instrument Certificate carries a signature that doesn’t match who was actually authorized to sign it, that can form the basis of a motion to suppress the breath test result. Suppression isn’t automatic. Whether a judge grants it depends on the specific facts, the machine’s history, and how the court weighs the due process implications of admitting unreliable evidence. But without the records, there’s nothing to argue from.
Colorado DUI cases run on two parallel tracks: the criminal case in court and a separate DMV license revocation hearing. Both have deadlines. Calibration and certification records are time-stamped documents, and they need to be requested and reviewed before those deadlines close off your options. Waiting until trial preparation to ask for a calibration log can mean missing the window to challenge the result in the DMV proceeding entirely. If the instrument generated an Exception Message during your test, that report belongs in the Discovery Packet and should be reviewed before any plea is entered. It means the machine itself flagged a problem completing the test, and it’s exactly the kind of document that gets missed when a defense review isn’t thorough.
The Calibration Record Is Only Useful If Someone Actually Pulls It
Every point in this article exists on paper somewhere in a CDPHE file or a local police department’s Discovery Packet. The tolerance figures, the certification dates, the Exception Messages, the signatures: all of it is documented and all of it is reviewable. But a BAC number on a printed receipt doesn’t come with a notation that the machine’s last calibration check was out of range or that the certificate had the wrong signature. That only surfaces when someone requests the records and knows what to look for.
That’s the work we do in DUI cases involving breath test evidence. If you’re facing a charge based on an Intoxilyzer 9000 result and you want the underlying records reviewed, Fife Luneau, P.C. is available 24/7 at (720) 408-7130.