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Why Your Breath Test Results may not Come Into Evidence at Your Trial in Massachusetts
Attorney DelSignore was interviewed by 'Worcester News Tonight' on the status of the breath test in January 2019"
The breath test in Massachusetts has not been used since August of 2017 in Massachusetts OUI cases. The Commonwealth is still not using these tests if a case were to go to trial; the expectation is that this will continue for the foreseeable future. There are a few reasons why they are not using the breath test.
In 2014, litigation started challenging the source code and the reliability of the 9510 breath test machine. At DelSignore Law, we have had over 30 clients join into that litigation and all of them had their breath test results excluded from evidence at their trial. Many of those clients were ultimately found not guilty after trial.
However, after the litigation ended, it was uncovered that the government did not turn over roughly 400 documents that were relevant in that hearing. As a result of this discovery, the commonwealth stopped using the breath test results in Massachusetts this past August.
Attorney DelSignore explains why your breathalyzer test results may not come into evidence in Massachusetts at this time
The head of the office of alcohol testing, Melissa O’Meara, was fired and lost her job based on this failure to provide documents and manage the list of 9510 litigation.
Accordingly, if you have taken a breath test, you should know that your results may not come into evidence. Many people assume that a case cannot be won if they have taken a breath test and failed, however, this has never been the case but especially at this point in time. Breath test cases continue to be successfully defended and won in court based on the fact that these results have not been used.
You can see a list of our recent cases; a majority of these cases the breath tests were not admitted into evidence and the individual was found not guilty of OUI. If you have any questions about the status of the breath test, feel free to contact me. My name is Michael DelSignore and I answer these questions every day. You can call me directly at 781-686-5924.
As mentioned before, feel free to read some of our case results over the past six months when the breath test was not included in evidence here.
