The head of a state crime lab office was fired Monday after investigators found that staff withheld exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers in thousands of drunken-driving cases since 2011, a disclosure that could threaten many convictions.
In a report released Monday, state public safety officials concluded that the Office of Alcohol Testing routinely withheld documents from defense lawyers in a lawsuit challenging the reliability of breathalyzer test results due to an unwritten policy not to turn these documents over to any requester.
The documents included evidence that breath testing devices had failed to properly calibrate during the offices certification process, the report found.
We conclude 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 to the legal obligations borne by those whose work facilitates criminal prosecutions, the report found.
These failures left prosecutors in the position of unwittingly representing to the court, and to defense counsel, that the Commonwealth had complied with its discovery obligations, when it fact it had not, the report concluded.
The investigation was conducted by the states Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. The Office of Alcohol Testing is part of the State Police crime laboratory and oversees the breath testing program for the state. It had been led since December 2013 by Melissa OMeara, who was fired and replaced by Curtis Wood, the undersecretary for forensic science and technology .
Daniel Bennett, the states secretary of public safety, said he plans to hire a retired state judge with experience presiding over criminal cases to help the office handle court-ordered discovery.
The state launched its investigation in August amid allegations from defense lawyers that the office failed to turn over evidence that the machines may have provided hundreds of flawed results over a two-year period.
The lawyers, who represent 750 drunken-driving defendants in the lawsuit, said the state's findings would have sweeping consequences.
This is going to impact every single breathalyzer test case, said Joseph Bernard, lead counsel in the case. Every single breath test from 2011 to the present will be impacted by this.
The case is reminiscent of the actions of Annie Dookhan, a former state chemist who was convicted of tampering with evidence and fabricating results in drug cases, leading to the dismissal of more than 21,000 charges in 2016.