The New Mathematics for Lawyers and Judges

-"A friend on the inside."-

Since so many lawyers have spent so much of their misdirected education studying such currently irrelevant subjects as history, constitutional law, philosophy, religion, English literature, and other relics of the pre-technological revolution, we believe they have missed out on the knowledge essential to survival in the world of computers, intoxilyzers, gas chromatographs and VCRs. We on the inside feel it is our duty to offer to them at least a novice’s understanding of the new math.

For those of you who may have been taught that 4 & 4=8, that 8 is greater than 6, and that different numbers actually differ in value from each other, welcome to the new math, as set forth in the latest breath alcohol regulations of the Division of Public Health Services.

Let us assume that your DWI client has submitted to an intoxilyzer test. The print-out shows a reported value of .08. The intoxilyzer analyzed three samples, because one of the first two analyses on the test record was .05, differing from the other by more than .02, thereby necessitating a third test. A closer look at the records transmitted to public health, but not printed out, reveal that two tests showed a value of .089 and the third test, which we have decreed the court must ignore, was .059. Let us further assume that you sent the two preserved samples to the independent laboratory of your choice (actually, with the enactment of the ten pages of regulations which micro-manage the laboratory, the use of the word "independent’ is what you lawyers like to term a legal fiction), and that the laboratory has somehow found the time to complete the mounds of paperwork that it, but not the public health lab, is obligated to prepare, and has further submitted to, and passed, t he required proficiency tests (Public Health does not have to do these either - - law is so easy when you get to make the rules). The result is reported to you by the laboratory of your choice as .06.

You, in your ignorance of the new math, may make the foolish and unwarranted assumption that the reported value of .08 (as reported by the computer) can be challenged, and that it is not prima facie evidence of your clients guilt beyond any scientific doubt. The fatal error in your thinking is that you do not understand that .06 and .08 are the same number - - that your laboratory analysis of .06 corroborates the reported value of .08. Well, you may say, "What about that .059 result that the Intoxilyzer 5000 itself reported? It is just the same as what my lab got – isn’t that worth something? Three tests out of five are at right around .06." Do not worry; under the new math, we ignore that .059, since it is so obviously inaccurate; it does not agree with the other two, and the majority rules.

Further, do not even think of raising the issue, since the law, as the Director has decreed it to be, from his scientifically objective and disinterested point of view, says the Judge must ignore it. So, heed this advice, this elementary glimpse into the world of higher mathematics, the math of bureaucrats and beancounters, of Madd and Sadd (no, not mothers and students, but mathematicians and scientists). Ignore, as we do, all numbers which do not clearly demonstrate the defendant’s guilt. And make sure to put this advice to practical application; you need not use it only in DWI cases. If you send a bill for $8,900.00 and your client sends you a check for $6,000.00 as payment in full, accept it readily, for under the new math, it is payment in full, for do not forget, .06=.08=.089, and if that is true, then every number equals every other number.*

If you do not accept this truth, you might as well insist that the sworn testimony of witnesses and other similarly unreliable evidence be used to judge if your client is impaired, rather than numbers impartially calculated by computer-driven technology capable of accurately measuring .01 gram of alcohol (about 1/3000 oz.) in 210 liters of breath (about a 55 gallon oil drum). Go on asserting the Constitution, statues, case law, and all those technicalities, for you do not understand the truth of the numbers, and the truth shall set you free. -- "A friend who understands."

*NOTE: The new math does not apply to the calculation or payment of taxes or fees due any governmental entity.