NORTHAMPTON — A Supreme Judicial Court ruling that alcohol tests given with a certain type of breathalyzer were invalid evidence in drunken-driving prosecutions between 2011 and 2019 will not affect area prosecutors’ approach to such cases.

The Boston Globe reported Wednesday that the ruling from the state’s highest court could affect 27,000 convicted drivers across the state over eight years. Defendants would not have their cases dismissed, but would be allowed to request new trials.

But legal questions over the validity of the machine’s results have swirled for years, and many such defendants already have sought a new trial. And the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office says it has long taken the position of not opposing motions for new trials where those breath test results were key to securing convictions.

“That has been the [office’s] approach since the initial settlement of the Ananias litigation, and will continue to be the approach should any additional motions for new trial be filed in any of the 1,987 cases affected by this decision,” the DA’s office said in a statement about the cases in its jurisdiction, which consists of Franklin and Hampshire counties and the town of Athol. The office was unable to determine Thursday how many such motions for new trials have been filed in its district.

Evando Ananias was one of the defendants who challenged the breath test evidence in their cases, leading Judge Robert Brennan, a district court judge in Boston, to rule in 2019 that all breathalyzer results from June 1, 2011, to April 19, 2019, be excluded from prosecutions.

Now satisfied that the machine, the Alcotest 9510, produces scientifically reliable results and that the State Police Office of Alcohol Testing has instituted key procedural changes, the DA’s office said it intends to introduce breath test evidence for OUI arrests that occurred after July 1, 2022.

The Supreme Judicial Court case stemmed from a lawsuit in which State Police were required to turn over worksheets documenting the effectiveness of the breath tests. According to The Boston Globe, while 11 of the worksheets indicated a “failed calibration,” a 2017 investigation revealed that State Police “intentionally withheld an additional 432 worksheets that reported failures in the annual calibration.”

Springfield defense attorney Joe Bernard, who has represented many of the defendants in the class-action suit since 2015, noted that those who pleaded guilty to OUI solely because of the breath test are the ones likely to lodge an appeal, not drivers for whom there was other strong evidence of intoxication.

Reach James Pentland at jpentland@gazettenet.com.

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