PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s highest court has upheld the manslaughter conviction of a woman who was drunk at the time of a fatal crash.
Thirty-two-year-old Heather Ducasse of Belgrade is serving a six-year sentence for the July 2008 two-vehicle accident in Belgrade that killed a 57-year-old Litchfield woman.
In her appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Hulsey claimed her Sixth Amendment rights were violated when a Superior Court judge allowed a blood collection test kit into evidence during her trial. She claimed she should have been able to confront the chemists who created the kit or to question a chemist about the effects of the chemicals in the kit.
She claimed the blood collection tube’s “certificate of compliance” amounted to testimony, but supreme court justices disagreed.