Sunday, September 24, 2023

The Supreme Judicial Court found "egregious government misconduct" and ruled all 27,000 tests from the breathalyzer machines performed between June 1, 2011 and April 18, 2019 should be excluded from criminal prosecutions.

Back in 2019, an investigation discovered breathalyzer testing machines were not calibrated properly, and that led to flawed test results.

"The scientific attitude in that lab was an us against them, we're right, you're wrong, we're here to produce a guilty finding, as opposed to the scientific aspect that we're here to produce the truth," said Joseph Bernard, the defense attorney who was co-counsel in the case.

Defendants who plead guilty or were convicted with breathalyzer evidence can ask to have their pleas withdrawn or ask for a new trial. The cases are drawing comparisons to the state lab scandal, where thousands of drug cases were tossed out due to chemists Annie Dookhan and Sonja Farak falsifying evidence.

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