The Statewide challenge to the accuracy of the breath test machine used in Massachusetts took a positive turn for the defense with a ruling from Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Botsford.<\/p>\n
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that defendants in a set of cases should be provided access to breathalyzer instruments and the necessary related materials to permit dynamic testing to be performed. The defendants in the cases of\u00a0Commonwealth v. Figuereo<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Commonwealth v. Ananias<\/em>\u00a0challenged the scientific reliability of the alcohol breath test results produced by a model of breathalyzer used throughout the Commonwealth, the Alcotest 9510. In both sets of cases, a Daubert-Lanigan hearing is anticipated, and this decision is an effort to define the scope of discovery relating to the defendant\u2019s challenges to the reliability of the Alocotest\u2019s breath test results.<\/p>\n The defendants have been permitted to conduct both static and dynamic testing of the Alcotest in relation to their anticipated hearings. Static testing involves analyzing the \u201csource code\u201d used in manufacturing the instruments and tailoring them to meet Massachusetts specifications. The \u201csource code\u201d of the breath test, and most computerized devices, is the code written by computer programmers when they develop the software that runs the machine. As the source code is written by programmers that created the breath test, having access to that code allows defense attorneys to have the code analyzed by a programming expert to determine whether the machine has any errors or faults.<\/p>\n