Drug driver gets off due to council slip up

Private tests cannot be used by local authorities as they fail to guarantee the rights of a defendant, states Alicante judge

AN ALICANTE judge has annulled the sanction imposed on a driver who tested positive for drugs at a local police checkpoint.

The motorist had been handed a €1,000 fine and lost six points from his licence for driving under the effects of a banned substance. According to a press release from the Regional Supreme Court (TSJ), the appeal judge in Alicante reversed the decision taken by Novelda town hall.

The court judgment notes that the local police had sent the suspect’s saliva to a private laboratory for testing, after he had initially tested positive at a roadblock in Novelda.

However, the judge upheld the complaint made by the accused because ‘there was a complete lack of judicial guarantee’ involved with sending a sample to an external source for such purposes.

The court noted that this could not be delegated, and ‘in no case to a private company’.

The judge stated that the ‘chain of custody’ was broken ‘the moment that the sample left the public domain’.

He noted that a private laboratory does not have the ‘legality and certainty’ which is offered in an ‘official laboratory which is part of the public system’.

For this reason the fine and points deduction which was awarded in April 2017 was annulled.

The original appeal by the motorist to Novelda town hall was turned down so he presented a complaint to the contentious-administrative court (Juzgado de lo ContenciosoAdministrativo) in Alicante city.