Bloods Taken, But My Sample Bag Returned Incomplete

[Idiotic]

Short summary to my other thread. I was involved in rta involving a small wall, no other occupants in vehicle, no other cars or people injured other than me. I was taken to hospital as airbag deployed but only minor injuries.

I had 2 blood samples taken by a police doctor who took bloods at 3am (crash was at 12am) last drink was probably 11:50 as my destination was only a mile.

The police did not give me my blood sample upon leaving, and after a long sleep in a police cell and being in total shock for a few days after had completly forgot i was told i was entitled to a sample.

The accident happened on the 20th, i picked up my blood sample on the 24th, 4 days later. Upon receiving the bloods the bottom section had not been completed what the blood was to be tested for (i made the officer aware of this and took a photo) im assuming im not allowed to fill it out myself as it says for police use only and if i did it would be considered as tampering with evidence?, the officer who gave it to me was not able to fill it out as he had no involvement of the case, the officers name on the bloods information was the officer who was guaring me in hospital, bit hes based at a station some 20 miles from where I was detained after leaving hospital... i left with no real answers what to do with my incomplete filled sample bag.

I phoned the police station recently to see on there system when the sample was sent off, conincidently, on the 25th the day after i picked up my own... im thinking if they had forgot to send it, and i hadnt picked mine up, they may have gone over the 7 days that they need to send it by (isnt that the maximum they have to send it off before the blood becomes inadmissiable as evidence?)

Is it possible that the second bag was also not marked with what it was to be tested of (drugs or alcohol or both), as the officer who filled out the bag isnt based at the station where the bloods were stored, and if he hasnt filled in one of the bag, maybe he didnt fill in both bags?, and that the lab would need to send it back to the police for marking by the officer in charge, then the police send back to the lab again?... all whilst the blood is being transported by multiple couriers unrefridgerated.

I have read that if unrefridgerated that the blood can ferment further and show a higher reading than if stored correctly.

Does giving me an incomplete bag amount to not giving me a bag at all? If you are not given a sample of your own through police fault (loss etc) it is thrown out of court.

If i said i asked the officer what to do with an incompete bag with no advice other than that other one will show the results, and the fact of getting it tested would have meant the fleeting chance of getting hold of a face 2 face meeting with the officer responsible for the completion of the bag (meaning me personally transporting it from a to b unrefriderated etc) surely something is wrong with this procedure. I know its only one tick, but maybe an important one?

Any thoughts?

 

[TipsyNurse]

Anything you receive from the police tends to be blank and unsigned because it is a copy for you. Normally there is a pretty rigorous chain of custody for their sample.

In terms of the sample itself, when it is collected it will be into a sterile vacutainer which will contain a colour coded solution of chemicals to preserve the sample. In the case of blood alcohol samples that is a mix of sodium fluoride and potassium oxalate. Essentially, your blood should be sterile, the container will be sterile, the blood should be collected via an aseptic technique and there are preservatives in the tube anyway.

Any sort of "fermentation" is highly improbable and studies have been carried out with blood samples from sober and inebriated people which have shown negligible difference no matter how quickly the samples were tested or how they were stored.

That's the negative bits. The positive bit is that blood tests in hospital are far more open to procedural flaws than a breath test in a police station. However, it needs to be a lot more substantial than possible homebrew at the cop shop.

Because of their nature most people pursuing a technical defence like that use a solicitor - the prosecution only needs to prove beyond reasonable doubt, not that no highly unlikely event occurred. If you were going to pursue it you could start by FoI requesting the procedure for dealing with DD blood samples from the police force. If they have broken their own policy it may not be a lifeline, but it would at least be a leg up.