NJ publishes 20,000+ DWI cases that may have been tainted by bad tests

⚫ Poorly calibrated breath tests resulted in admissible readings

⚫ Impacted individuals can seek post-conviction relief

⚫ The sergeant who lied about the tests is in prison

New Jersey has published records for more than 20,000 driving-while-intoxicated convictions that may have not been legit. And individuals impacted by the improper breathalyzer tests can be in line to have convictions overturned.

The Office of the Attorney General on Monday released two public documents that aim to help DWI offenders learn whether or not they were rightfully convicted.

One file contains more than 23,000 DWI cases that may have been impacted between November 2008 and April 2016. During that time, according to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling, a New Jersey State Police sergeant — who is now in prison — did not follow proper protocol while calibrating several Alcotest instruments that were to be used to determine drivers' sobriety on the road.

According to the court, the actions by Marc Dennis "adversely affected the scientific reliability" of the breath tests taken on the instruments he had calibrated, meaning the results are inadmissible in court.

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The long public list does not include individuals' names, but those who want to learn whether they're in line for post-conviction relief can match information from the list with information on a second file shared by officials, which contains PDFs of the various affected calibration records.

Both documents can be found here.

Prior to the publication of these records, officials had sent notices to affected defendants, at the addresses they had at the time of their DWI arrests.

Dennis, 53, of Waretown, is serving a five-year prison sentence that began in 2023.

He had been suspended in 2016 when officials learned that he may have been taking shortcuts when calibrating the Alcotest instruments. When he was suspended, Dennis was told to hand over his NJSP identifications, but he held on to one piece of identification that he'd later use to try to get out of several traffic stops between September 2016 and April 2018.

In March 2023, Dennis was sentenced on the counts of official misconduct and pattern of official misconduct, without the possibility of parole.

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