About 27,000 convicted of OUI in Massachusetts can appeal due to faulty breathalyzers, top court rules

The top court in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday that about 27,000 people with drunk driving convictions can appeal for new trials if their cases involved a specific kind of breathalyzer device. 

The Supreme Judicial Court, in a ruling written by Justice Frank M. Gaziano, said that any test conducted between June 1, 2011 and April 18, 2019 using the Alcotest 9510 device “must be excluded in any pending or future prosecutions.”

Gaziano cites government misconduct involving the State Police Office of Alcohol Testing (OAT).

“The extensive nature of OAT’s misconduct, and the inability of the defendants in the consolidated cases challenging the reliability of the Alcotest 9510 device… have resulted in the violation of the right to due process for approximately 27,000 defendants,” he wrote. 

These defendants, whether they pleaded guilty or were convicted after trial, are entitled to a presumption of “egregious government misconduct.” They can now file motions to withdraw their guilty pleas and for new trials. 

This ruling is tied to a guilty plea made in 2013 by Lindsay Hallinan after she blew a 0.23% on an Alcotest 9510. The court said that she pleaded guilty because “her attorney advised that her case was unwinnable,” Gaziano wrote. 

But the tests were later found to be unreliable, and she moved to rescind her guilty plea. OAT was also found to have a “disturbing pattern of intentionally withholding exculpatory evidence year after year,” Gaziano wrote. 

This misconduct was uncovered during the Annie Dookhan case. A former state chemist who was found to have falsified drug tests, Dookhan went to prison for three years. While initially found to be the “sole bad actor,” at her lab, documents released earlier this year revealed misconduct could have been more widespread.

The approximately 27,000 defendants whose OUI convictions were implicated by OAT’s misconduct have been notified by the state, according to the court. 

“Requiring tens of thousands of defendants to bear the cost of proving that OAT’s conduct was egregiously impermissible would be antithetical to our responsibility to ensure the efficient administration of justice,” Gaziano wrote.

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