By Jen Lynds
BDN Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — A Sinclair man found guilty of drunken driving last fall succeeded in getting his conviction overturned by the state’s highest court.
The justices of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled a lower court judge erred in not allowing Graydon Adams Jr., 52, to present evidence that might question the validity of a breathalyzer test administered following his arrest.
The case has been sent back to the Aroostook County Superior Court. Assistant District Attorney John Pluto, who prosecuted the case, could not immediately be reached Friday to determine how the state would proceed.
Adams was at work at the Maine Military Authority in Limestone on Sept. 11, 2012, when someone reportedly noted he smelled of alcohol and his employer asked him to submit to a portable breath test, according to court documents. The breath sample administered in the workplace showed Adams’ blood-alcohol content was 0.04, and he was required under company policy to go home, according to court documents.
After Adams left work, a Maine Military Authority employee called a dispatcher for the Limestone Police Department to report Adams was “driving a van south on Route 89 and that he was under the influence.”
Adams soon was stopped by an officer and was taken to the Caribou Police Department. A breathalyzer test administered there showed his blood-alcohol content was 0.11, which is above Maine’s legal limit of 0.08 for operating a vehicle.
Adams, who had been convicted of operating under the influence in 2007, was charged with his second OUI.
During a hearing in superior court in December 2013, Adams tried to have the workplace portable breath-test results entered as evidence to counter the state’s results.
Arguing then as he did again before the supreme court justices later, Pluto questioned the reliability of the workplace test and stressed the testing device did not bear a certification by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. All devices used by police to administer such tests in Maine must be certified by DHHS.
“We do not know how old this machine is, and it’s not approved by the court,” Pluto contended. “We do not know who did the testing and how much training the tester had. We don’t have any information about this.”
The superior court justice sided with the prosecutor and prohibited the introduction of the workplace portable breath test results.
Adams agreed to enter a conditional guilty plea to criminal OUI, provided he be allowed to change his plea and go to trial should he succeed in his appeal to the law court to have the workplace test entered as evidence.
Adams was represented by attorney Alan Harding of Presque Isle in that appeal, which took place on Oct. 24, when the supreme court justices visited Presque Isle High School as part of an annual road trip to high schools.
Justice Warren Silver wrote the opinion released Dec. 18 for the six supreme court justices who ruled in the case. Silver indicated the “trial court erred as a matter of law” in relying on a section of existing law to “exclude evidence of the workplace breath-alcohol test and denying Adams the opportunity to lay a foundation regarding the test’s validity and reliability.”
