A retired Superior Court judge has been appointed to untangle more than 20,000 drunken driving cases called into question after the state Supreme Court ruled breath-testing results from those cases were inadmissible.
Robert A. Fall, a former judge in the appellate division, will serve as a “special master” overseeing the cases “to develop better processing of these cases, to provide greater consistency and efficiency, and to minimize conflicts and delays,” according to an order signed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner on Tuesday.
The appointment is the latest step in the lengthy legal fallout of a criminal case involving a State Police sergeant who was in charge of calibrating breath-testing devices used by local police in Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset, and Union counties between 2008 and 2016.
The sergeant, Marc Dennis, was accused of lying on official documents about performing a legally required temperature check while calibrating the machines, known as Alcotest devices, which gauge the blood-alcohol level of accused drunken drivers.
He has denied any wrongdoing and his criminal case is ongoing. The accusations concerned just three machines, but the accusations brought into question the accuracy of any device the trooper handled.
The state Supreme Court ruled late last year that tests obtained from the use of uncalibrated machines in some 20,600 adjudicated cases could not be used as evidence. It remains unclear how many cases could be tossed as a result of the scandal, because not all drunken driving cases rely solely on the results of a breath test.
Fall, who is on recall, will determine whether to handle all the legal challenges at a central location or leave them to the county or municipal court where they were initially heard.
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter.
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