DUI News Blog The Latest DUI News and Information From DUI Defense Attorneys Across the Country

Massachusetts defense attorneys and prosecutors have reached a tentative agreement, pending approval and modification by the court, regarding sanctions imposed against the government for refusing to disclose court-ordered evidence during state-wide litigation challenging the reliability of the Dräger 9510 breath test machines. Under a previous court order, breath tests results were presumptively excluded from evidence at trial if the machine had last been calibrated between June 1, 2011 and September 14, 2014. As a result of government misconduct, however, where ... Read More »

District Attorney offices throughout the Commonwealth continue negotiations with representatives of the defense bar regarding the admissibility of breath test results at trial. Some possibilities include expanding the time of presumptively excluded breath tests to include all tests performed since the Dräger 9510 machines were put into service in 2012 through at least 2017. Another potential outcome is to give both prosecutors and defense counsel online access to all maintenance and service records for each machine. We expect that all ... Read More »

In Commonwealth v. Nascimento, SJC-12442 (June 5, 2018) the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently corrected a long-standing practice of the lower courts sentencing drivers operating on a license suspended for administrative reasons related to OUI (such as breath test failure or refusal) to the same mandatory jail time required for someone operating on a license suspended for an OUI conviction. The statute mandates a minimum sixty-day sentence for anyone convicted of operating on a license that has been suspended on ... Read More »

After a recent event in South Boston, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker declared: First of all, I think we all agree that the State Police has some work to do to rebuild public trust and credibility. The Governor’s comments were prompted by the latest in a series of allegations of misconduct by the State Police. This most recent scandal to plague the embattled agency may result in criminal charges by Attorney General Maura Healey against members of Troop E for inflated ... Read More »

The latest hearing regarding the Massachusetts defense bar’s challenge to the Dräger 9510 breath test machine was held by Judge Brennan in Concord on Thursday, February 15, 2018. At that hearing, both Brennan and the defense bar, represented by Joseph Bernard, expressed their dismay that discovery previously withheld by the government continued to trickle out or had even been lost “due to dysfunction at the OAT [Office of Alcohol Testing].” The government pressed Brennan for a schedule that would give ... Read More »

In September 2017, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that police cannot give testimony that, in the officer’s opinion, a driver was under the influence of marijuana based on their on-scene observations, including sobriety tests. The court found that there is no consensus in the scientific community that roadside sobriety tests prove someone is under the influence of marijuana. The judges noted that the effects of marijuana “vary greatly from one individual to another, and those effects are as ... Read More »

The Massachusetts Senate approved a measure that would require an ignition interlock device for all drivers found to be operating under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Massachusetts is currently the only New England state that does not require the device for first offenders. The measure is now in the House where a representative of Mothers Against Drunk Driving testified in support of the legislation that is similar to laws enacted in 30 other states. The law would replace the ... Read More »

Mounting problems at the Executive Office of Alcohol Testing (“OAT”), the Massachusetts State Police crime lab responsible for the use of the Dräger Alcotest 9510 breath test machines, have triggered the firing of Melissa O’Meara, head of the OAT. A report disclosed Monday found that “OAT leadership made serious errors of judgment in its responses to court-ordered discovery, errors which were enabled by a longstanding and insular institutional culture that was reflexively guarded . . . and which was inattentive ... Read More »

The Massachusetts State Police Office of Alcohol Testing (“OAT”) intentionally withheld documents showing breath test machines may have provided at least hundreds of flawed results, according to defense attorneys. This latest revelation could ultimately affect over 58,000 cases since 2011, when the Commonwealth first began using the Dräger 9510 machines. As a result, District Attorneys throughout the Commonwealth have again suspended the use of breath test results in trials and plea negotiations. Furthermore, the Secretary for the Executive Office of ... Read More »

One day after the Massachusetts House voted to raise the proposed tax on retail marijuana sales to 28 percent, the Senate overwhelmingly voted (30-5) to preserve the 12 percent maximum endorsed by voters in a ballot question last November. The proposed legislation is now headed to a conference committee with hopes that a final bill will be sent to the Governor by next Friday, June 30. The selling of marijuana for recreational purposes is currently illegal in Massachusetts but the ... Read More »