Massachusetts High Court Opens 27,000 Drunk Driving Cases to Reconsideration

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ruled that 27,000 people who pled guilty or were convicted of drunk driving from June 1, 2011 to April 18, 2019, are entitled to have their cases reconsidered due to the state police lab’s widespread mishandling of breathalyzer tests and withholding of evidence.

According to the high court ruling, the 27,000 with operating under the influence (OUI) records are entitled to a “conclusive presumption of egregious government misconduct” because of the misconduct by the state police office of alcohol testing (OAT). They may proceed in motions to withdraw their guilty pleas, and motions for new trials, without having to establish egregious government misconduct in each case, and their breath test results are excluded from use at any subsequent trial.

The court stopped short of dismissing all of the 27,000 consolidated cases with prejudice as it had done a few years ago with 30,000 drug conviction cases due to a state drug lab’s misconduct. The court said it did not dismiss all of the 27,000 OUI cases because the state may still be able to prove drunk driving using other evidence such as field sobriety tests, police observations, blood tests, and statements by a defendant. The court said alternative avenues to proving guilt are less available in drug cases.

For years, OAT failed to maintain breathalyzer machines in a scientifically reliable manner and routinely withheld exculpatory evidence. In 2019, state prosecutors signed a joint agreement with the courts acknowledging the misconduct.

In considering consolidated litigation (Commonwealth v. Ananias) on the matter, Judge Robert Brennan of the state district court banned the use of any OUI tests issued by the state lab from June 1, 2011 to April 18, 2019 in criminal prosecutions.

The high court agreed with the district court that the conclusion that OAT’s behavior was “egregiously impermissible is inescapable.” The court said OAT’s behavior “undermined the criminal justice system in the Commonwealth, compromised thousands of prosecutions for OUI offenses, and potentially resulted in inaccurate convictions.”

Massachusetts High Court to Weigh Fate of 27,000 Drunk Driving Cases

The extensive nature of OAT’s misconduct, and the inability of the defendants in the consolidated cases to challenge the reliability of the breathalyzer devices, “resulted in the violation of the right to due process” for the 27,000 defendants, the high court found.

In the individual case before the court it found that the District Judge Brennan erred in denying Lindsey Hallinan’s motion to withdraw her original admission of guilt after state courts found that breathalyzer test evidence was unreliable and that the state lab had a practice of withholding exculpatory evidence. Hallinan had based her admission of guilt on her lawyer’s advice and the expectation that credible breathalyzer evidence would be introduced against her.

In denying Hallinan’s bid to withdraw her guilty plea, Judge Brennan found that there was no doubt that defendants who tendered pleas before his ban were victimized by OAT’s conduct in withholding exculpatory evidence. However, he denied Hallinan’s motion because he said “it is not within the authority of [the trial court] to create a conclusive presumption of egregious misconduct for all cases” involving the breathalyzer results.

The Supreme Court was asked on appeal to reverse the district court’s order denying Hallinan’s motion to vacate her plea, with the high court’s answer potentially affecting the many drivers impacted by the OAT testing including those who went to trial and those who pled guilty during the period.

In an amicus brief, public defenders had urged the Supreme Court to “vacate and dismiss” all affected 27,000 defendants’ cases based on OAT’s wrongdoing. The public defenders said they and the courts could not handle the volume of re-trials required and the cost would be too high.

However, the state opposed that global remedy and asked the court to uphold convictions where people pled guilty on the basis of the evidence presented by the state, especially if, as in Hallinan’s case, they did so without any question or further discovery.

Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services, called the ruling a “victory for the thousands of people who have been living with tainted convictions and for those who believe the government should be accountable” for its actions. “Much like in the drug lab cases that came before, the court has wisely granted relief to all defendants impacted,” he stated.

The court addressed the unusual fact in the case that the particular sentence given Hallinan was actually illegal and not in accordance with state OUI laws.

Thus the court ordered that where a defendant successfully moves for a new trial due to OAT’s misconduct, and thereafter is convicted, so long as the defendant’s original sentence was legal, the new sentence will be capped at no more than the original sentence. If the defendant’s original sentence was illegal, the new sentence will not be limited to the initial disposition.

Topics Personal Auto Massachusetts