PRESQUE ISLE — Students from several high schools got more insight into Maine case law and personal and professional ethics last week when the Maine Supreme Judicial Court heard an appeal at Presque Isle High School as part of its annual road trip to high schools.
The court heard oral arguments in three cases, and students from several grades throughout the school filed in and out between sessions so they could each get a chance to experience one. Some students from the University of Maine at Fort Kent also were present.
Attorney Alan Harding of Presque Isle is representing Graydon Adams Jr., 52, of Sinclair, who is appealing a decision from Aroostook County Superior Court in Caribou that the results of a portable breath test administered at his workplace at the Maine Military Authority in Limestone cannot be introduced as evidence in court.
Adams has entered a conditional guilty plea to criminal operating under the influence, upon the condition that if the Maine Supreme Judicial Court remands the Superior Court’s decision and finds that Adams can introduce the portable breath test results that were administered at Maine Military Authority, he can withdraw his conditional guilty plea and introduce this evidence at trial.
Assistant District Attorney John Pluto maintained before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that the portable breath test results should be kept out.
Adams was at work at Maine Military Authority in Limestone on Sept. 11, 2012, when he was observed to be omitting an odor of alcohol and was asked to submit to a portable breath test, according to court documents. The breath sample showed that Adams’ blood alcohol content was 0.04, according to court documents. Adams was then told that company policy required him to go home, according to court documents, and after he left, a Maine Military Authority employee called the dispatch for the Limestone Police Department to report that he was “driving a van south on Route 89 and that he was under the influence.”
Adams was soon stopped by law enforcement and was then taken to the Caribou Police Department. There, Adams used a breathalyzer device, which police said showed his blood alcohol content was 0.11. That is more than Maine’s legal limit of 0.08 for operating a vehicle. Adams was charged with operating under the influence. His last OUI was in 2007.
During a hearing in December 2013, a Superior Court judge prohibited the introduction of the workplace portable breath test results because the testing device did not bear a certification by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
Pluto expanded on that argument in front of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court at Presque Isle High School this week.
“We do not know how old this machine is, and it’s not approved by the court,” said Pluto. “We do not know who did the testing and how much training the tester had. We don’t have any information about this.”
Harding argued that the portable breath test could be introduced under a subsection of Maine law, and that the Aroostook County Superior Court erred by excluding it.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court also asked for more information on the portable breath test owned by Maine Military Authority, such as photocopies of stickers or model information about the machine, which Harding did not have.
“How are we to make a decision about reliability if there is no record?” Chief Justice Leigh Saufley said.
Saufley also asked why Adams was on the road that day.
“Isn’t there something wrong with an employer saying, ‘You have been drinking, go home,’” she said.
Pluto, however, said that he was not sure if the human resources director told Adams that he simply could not be on the property, said he was “suspended” or used other words. Another justice noted that Adams could have had more to drink before leaving work as well.
The justices will administer a decision within a few months.
After the hearing, Pluto said that Harding wanted to get the portable breath test results admitted into evidence so that his client could attempt to convince a jury that the breathalyzer test given by the Caribou Police Department that day was inaccurate.
While students weren’t allowed to address the justices directly, they did have questions for the presenting attorneys and Frank Bemis, a Presque Isle lawyer who served as moderator. One student wanted to know if, legally, the employer had to call the police and turn in his employee for having shown up to work while drunk.
Bemis told the students the employer did not legally have to call police, but it would be the ethical choice.
If the decision is affirmed, Adams will serve seven days in jail and have his license suspended for three years. He also will have to pay a $700 fine.