HORIZONTAL GAZE NYSTAGMUS: A CLOSER LOOK
Meaney, Joseph R.
Jurimetrics, Volume 36, Number 4, pp. 383-407 (Summer 1996)
Police officers in every state routinely administer the "pen-waving" test to drunk driving suspects. This test is formally referred to as the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) test. All ten state supreme courts that have directly considered the admissibility of HGN testimony to show that a defendant was operating under the influence have decided in favor of admissibility. However, two recent state supreme courts have questioned this result. This Note analyzes the admissibility of HGN as proof of intoxication. It applies the two dominant approaches to the admissibility of scientific evidence: scientific validity and general acceptance. It shows that despite being generally accepted by some scientific communities for some purposes, HGN is not scientifically valid as a field sobriety test. It concludes that more testing is required to determine HGN's accuracy to evaluate blood alcohol levels near the legal limit before it should be admitted in certain situations.