Massachusetts law requires police to get an OUI arrestee’s consent before conducting “a chemical test or analysis of his breath [or blood].” See G.L. c. 90, Sec. 24(1)(e).
In 2021 police arrested a driver suspected of operating under the influence of alcohol. The man refused the field sobriety test and the breath test. The booking process was cut short, however, when the man coughed up blood at the police station.
The police brought the man to the hospital where medical staff took blood samples.
The man did not consent to the blood being used as evidence by the police. Nevertheless, the police obtained the hospital records and sent them to an expert who prepared a “Serum/Plasma Conversion Report.”
This report supposedly used hospital data to calculate the man’s blood-alcohol content (BAC) on the day he was arrested.
Citing G.L. c. 90, Sec. 24(1)(e), the man objected to the report being used at trial. The judge agreed and the unconsented-to analysis was suppressed. The Commonwealth appealed the decision.
Today the Supreme Judicial Court held that Massachusetts law does not bar such evidence at trial.
According to the SJC’s tenuous reasoning, the statute requires a driver’s consent for chemical testing or analysis of his or her breath/blood. What the police did here was a mathematical analysis of the defendant’s fluids.
(Do you see the difference? Because I don’t. The police are still using a scientific analysis of the driver’s blood without consent to determine his BAC. How a chemical blood analysis differs from a mathematical blood analysis is not made clear in the court’s ruling.)
The SJC was “not persuaded” by defense counsel’s warning that such a decision might “force citizens to choose between the right to refuse blood test and potentially lifesaving care.”
To that argument, the SJC responded:
[W]hatever merit the defendant’s policy arguments may have, it is for the Legislature to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of the statutory scheme. (Citations and quotations omitted.)
The full text of the slip opinion is attached below.