From Ananias to Hallinan: The Massachusetts Breath Test Exclusion Era and Who Can Still Reopen a Case

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

For nearly eight years, from June 1, 2011 to April 18, 2019, the breath test numbers offered in Massachusetts OUI courtrooms could not be trusted, and the courts eventually said so. Roughly 27,000 defendants were notified that their cases rested on results from a machine program whose calibration practices failed, and whose failures were hidden. This post tells that story from the first challenge to the current rule, because the exclusion era still decides cases in 2026: old convictions can still be reopened under Commonwealth v. Hallinan, 491 Mass. 730 (2023), and every current breath test is administered under the regulations and scrutiny that the litigation produced.

The Machine and the Missing Protocols

Massachusetts adopted the Draeger Alcotest 9510 in 2011. The device itself is a dual-sensor instrument, measuring each breath sample by infrared absorption and by an electrochemical fuel cell, a design the Supreme Judicial Court has examined and sustained. Commonwealth v. Camblin, 471 Mass. 639 (2015); Commonwealth v. Camblin, 478 Mass. 469 (2017). The machine, however, is only as good as its calibration, and calibration belongs to the Office of Alcohol Testing, the state laboratory known as OAT. In the consolidated litigation that became known as Ananias, a District Court judge found that OAT had operated with no written protocols at all for the annual calibration and certification of the Alcotest 9510 until September 15, 2014. Results from devices calibrated and certified between June 1, 2011 and September 14, 2014 were held presumptively unreliable and excluded; results after the written protocols took effect were presumed reliable.

The Withheld Worksheets

The litigation did not end there, because the Commonwealth’s own disclosures did. During an August 2, 2017 hearing at which an OAT employee testified, it emerged that OAT had failed to disclose exculpatory failed calibration worksheets, documents showing that machines had failed their own certification checks. The revelation transformed a scientific dispute into a misconduct case. The parties ultimately submitted a joint resolution under which the presumptive exclusion was enlarged, the Commonwealth agreed not to relitigate OAT’s calibration reliability case by case, and notice was sent, at the Commonwealth’s expense, to the roughly 27,000 defendants whose cases had ended adversely after an Alcotest 9510 test. In January 2019, after a three-day hearing, the judge accepted the resolution and set the conditions OAT had to meet before results could return to the courtrooms. The exclusion ended on April 18, 2019.

Hallinan: The Conclusive Presumption

The Supreme Judicial Court completed the story in Commonwealth v. Hallinan, 491 Mass. 730 (2023). The court held that OAT’s conduct violated due process on a systemic scale, and that any defendant whose case included a breath test result from an Alcotest 9510 administered between June 1, 2011 and April 18, 2019 is entitled to a conclusive presumption of egregious government misconduct when moving to withdraw a guilty plea or for a new trial. The defendant no longer has to prove the misconduct; it is established as a matter of law. What remains is the second question, whether the breath test reasonably influenced the decision to plead guilty, and in a case where the number was the Commonwealth’s central evidence, that showing is often within reach.

Who Can Still Use Hallinan in 2026

The window covers tests taken from June 1, 2011 through April 18, 2019, and there is no deadline in the decision itself for bringing the motion. Drivers with convictions or admissions from those years carry consequences that continue today: a prior OUI counts forever under the lifetime lookback, raises the penalties for any new offense, and lengthens every license suspension that follows. A successful Hallinan motion removes the old disposition, and with it the enhancement. Any driver whose Massachusetts OUI from that period still matters, because of a new charge, a license consequence, an immigration issue, or a professional licensing question, should have the old file reviewed.

What a Breath Test Challenge Looks Like Today

A 2026 challenge starts where the exclusion era left off, with the paperwork. The device’s calibration and certification records, the operator’s certification, and the printed test sequence are demanded and read against 501 CMR 2.00, which requires a 15-minute observation period before the test, a sequence of two breath samples agreeing within plus or minus 0.02, and a control standard analysis between them. The timing of the test supports a rising blood alcohol argument under Commonwealth v. Colturi, 448 Mass. 809 (2007), where delay goes to the weight of the number. And Camblin preserves the right to a scientific reliability hearing on the device itself. The full science, the machine, the regulations, the pharmacology, and the blood test rules from Bohigian, Moreau, and Gannett, is set out on the firm’s new page on breath test and blood alcohol science, with plain-language answers in the breath test and BAC FAQs.

Related Serpa Law Office resources

The firm’s pages on breathalyzer defense and OUI and DUI defense cover the litigation this history shaped, the post on why a breathalyzer result does not establish guilt makes the trial argument, and the page on sobriety checkpoints covers arrests where the breath test is the only number in the case. For a review of a current charge or an Ananias-era conviction, call 617.936.0201 for a confidential consultation.