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Judge revokes Benjamin Richardson’s bond after monitoring company testifies to repeated alcohol detections
Summary
A Chetm County judge revoked Benjamin Richardson’s bond after testimony from Nationwide Electronic Monitoring that multiple confirmed alcohol consumption events and tamper alerts appeared on his SCRAM bracelet; Richardson said he drank nonalcoholic beer and raised device‑registration problems.
A judge in Chetm County revoked the bond of Benjamin Richardson after the state presented transdermal‑alcohol monitoring records showing multiple confirmed alcohol detections and tamper events while Richardson was on pretrial release.
Kelly Arnold, a custodian of records for Nationwide Electronic Monitoring, walked the court through the company’s analytic process, saying the device samples the skin every 30 minutes and analysts require a pattern — two zeros, an absorption curve, a peak and an elimination curve followed by two zeros — before calling a confirmed consumption. Arnold testified the device logged repeated multi‑day consumption events and additional confirmed tampers between late January and March, including an event that did not return to zero for several days.
“We had a multi‑day peak consumption from March 6 through March 12,” Arnold said, describing peaks and the steps analysts take to exclude environmental false positives. She explained the company’s safeguards — tamper detection, temperature and IR‑voltage checks — and said if analysts cannot confirm an event they do not forward a violation to the court.
Richardson disputed the monitoring results on the stand, saying he had been drinking so‑called 0.0 beers that he believed contained no alcohol and describing problems with device registration and the base unit connection early in his monitoring period. “I thought they were 0.0 under the assumption that they didn’t have any alcohol in them,” Richardson testified. He said he had recently sought maintenance for the device and that his family brought him drinks.
The court also heard that the monitoring vendor had logged multiple confirmed consumptions and confirmed tampers over several weeks. The judge observed that the combined monitoring record and the defendant’s account left the court unconvinced by Richardson’s explanations and found the state had shown a sufficient basis to revoke the bond. The judge then revoked Richardson’s bond and ordered him remanded in custody pending further proceedings.
The court’s revocation was based on the evidence presented at the hearing; Richardson’s attorney signaled an intent to pursue challenges to the underlying monitoring records in subsequent filings. The transcript shows the court relied on the vendor’s explanation of analytic criteria and the chronological pattern of positive events rather than a single isolated spike.
Next steps: the court handled scheduling for related docket matters and instructed counsel to coordinate any evidentiary challenges and motions ahead of further proceedings.
