Commonwealth v. Grimaldi: The SJC Allows Checkpoint Bodycam Recordings of Field Sobriety Tests

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | 30 Years Massachusetts Criminal Defense

On June 2, 2026, the Supreme Judicial Court decided Commonwealth v. Grimaldi, SJC-13842, and answered a question that Massachusetts sobriety checkpoint cases have raised since troopers began wearing body cameras: can the Commonwealth use bodycam recordings of a driver’s field sobriety tests when no one told the driver he was being recorded? The court held that it can, so long as the police did not intend to record secretly. The decision reverses a suppression order, gives prosecutors video in DUI checkpoint cases, and leaves defense counsel a narrower but real set of recording challenges. The opinion deserves a close read, because what the court did not decide matters nearly as much as what it did.

The Checkpoint on Page Boulevard

On the night of March 14, 2024, the State Police ran a sobriety checkpoint on Page Boulevard in Springfield. At about 11:30 P.M., the defendant pulled his pickup truck into the checkpoint. A trooper noticed the smell of alcohol, slurred speech, and glassy eyes, and directed him to the checkpoint pit, the secondary screening area in a parking lot off the roadway, lit by floodlights and staffed by at least twelve uniformed troopers. Near the entrance to the pit stood a large, highly reflective orange or yellow sign reading, in substance, checkpoint, video and audio recording. The motion judge found no evidence that the defendant ever saw it, and no trooper told him he was being recorded.

Two troopers wearing body cameras administered the nine-step walk and turn and the one leg stand. The cameras were mounted at chest level and showed red lights while recording. During the walk and turn, one trooper took his camera off his jacket, held it in his hand, and pointed it at the defendant’s feet for the roughly forty seconds of the test. The defendant was arrested for operating under the influence of liquor, G.L. c. 90, § 24 (1) (a) (1), and learned of the recordings only at the barracks.

The Wiretap Statute and the Suppression Order

The Massachusetts wiretap statute, G.L. c. 272, § 99, makes it a crime to willfully intercept an oral communication, and it defines an interception as secretly recording a communication without prior authority from all parties. G.L. c. 272, § 99 B 4, C 1. A body-worn camera is an intercepting device under the statute. Commonwealth v. Rainey, 491 Mass. 632, 637 (2023). A defendant whose communications were intercepted in violation of the statute may move to suppress them, G.L. c. 272, § 99 P, and where an audio-visual recording violates the statute, both the audio and the video must be suppressed. Commonwealth v. Du, 495 Mass. 103, 104 (2024). The District Court judge found that the defendant was not reasonably put on notice of any recording and suppressed the footage. A single justice allowed the Commonwealth’s interlocutory appeal, and the Supreme Judicial Court took the case on its own motion.

Willfulness Requires an Intent to Record Secretly

The court reversed. Writing for a unanimous bench, Justice Gaziano held that suppression requires a willful interception, and willfulness requires not merely an intent to record but an intent to record secretly, an intent to record someone without their knowledge. The record foreclosed that conclusion. The reflective roadside sign showed that the troopers intended to notify motorists that they were being recorded, whatever this driver noticed. The cameras were worn openly with visible red lights, the pit was brightly lit, and a trooper held his camera in plain view and pointed it at the defendant’s feet. Police who record that openly are not recording secretly, and a driver’s own inattention does not convert an open recording into a willful interception.

The court reached that result by analogy to its jail telephone cases, Commonwealth v. Ennis, 439 Mass. 64 (2003), and Commonwealth v. Boyarsky, 452 Mass. 700 (2008), where a recorded warning played for the person who answered the call, and a third person who later joined the call never heard it. The recordings survived there because the facilities had made affirmative efforts to give notice. The sign at the checkpoint served the same function as the recorded warning: an affirmative effort to tell the people being recorded that recording was underway.

A Policy Violation Is Not a Suppression Ground

The State Police body camera policy, General Order No. ADM-35, directs troopers to make every effort to tell civilians they are being recorded, with suggested language to use. No trooper said anything of the kind to this defendant. The court held that even a failure to follow the policy would not change the outcome, because a violation of a written police policy is not an independent ground for suppression under § 99 P. The court contrasted the inventory search and strip search settings, where compliance with written procedures carries constitutional weight, and explained that the wiretap statute is not a constitutional inquiry that turns on a reasonable expectation of privacy. Commonwealth v. Jackson, 370 Mass. 502, 506 (1976).

What Grimaldi Leaves Open

The court decided the case entirely on willfulness and expressly declined to decide whether the troopers secretly recorded the defendant at all. That question remains open, and with it the argument that a recording made without effective notice is a secret one. The notice facts of each checkpoint therefore still matter: where the sign stood, whether it was lit and legible at the point of decision, what the officers said, and whether the cameras were visible to a driver focused on a roadside test at midnight. Grimaldi also does not disturb Du, where the Supreme Judicial Court suppressed the audio and video of an undercover drug purchase recorded without any notice at all. The line the two cases draw is between open recording with affirmative notice efforts, which survives, and covert recording, which does not. A record of the order in which those facts developed at a particular checkpoint is exactly what a suppression motion is built on.

What This Means for a Pending Checkpoint OUI

The practical consequences run in both directions. Prosecutors will offer checkpoint bodycam video more freely, and defense counsel should demand all of it, because the video that shows the walk and turn also shows how the test was instructed, how the pavement sloped, and how a nervous, sober driver can look at midnight under floodlights. The recording challenge is narrower after Grimaldi but alive where the notice efforts were thinner than they were on Page Boulevard. And nothing in the decision touches the older, stronger checkpoint defenses: the written guidelines that must be followed in full, and the reasonable suspicion required before a driver is sent to the pit. Those requirements, and the cases that enforce them, are covered on the firm’s new page on Massachusetts sobriety checkpoints and DUI roadblocks.

Related Serpa Law Office resources

The firm’s pages on OUI and DUI defense, field sobriety test defense, and the Massachusetts wiretap law cover the doctrine behind this decision, the DUI checkpoint FAQs answer the questions drivers ask about roadblocks, the wiretap and secret recording FAQs address recording law more broadly, and the page on breath test and blood alcohol science covers the test that usually follows a checkpoint arrest. For a checkpoint arrest anywhere in Greater Boston, call 617.936.0201 for a confidential consultation.