The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts’ highest court has been urged by a special counsel to toughen laws and courtroom policy after a report was revealed that 97% of DUI bench trials ended in acquittal in one county. The study was commissioned by the Supreme Judicial Court last year after a Globe Spotlight series found that a significant number of people charged with DUI do not have traditional trials by jury but instead go before a judge, and 4 out of 5 who go to bench are acquitted. The high number of acquittals is 11 percentage points higher in Worcester County than in the rest of the state, and the issue with having a near 100 percent acquittal rate is that it creates an appearance of leniency, according to the study. The recommendations by the study included requiring defendants to choose a bench trial earlier in the process to avoid “judge shopping.”

Defendants are allegedly waiving their right to a jury trial on the day of when a judge with a reputation for leniency appears on the bench. The Supreme Judicial Court chose Jack Cinquegrana, a former federal and state prosecutor, as special counsel on the issue. He produced a 148-page report which included other recommendations such as requiring district court judges to rotate through courts more often. It was also recommended that judges receive better training on how to handle scientific evidence.

The study points out that lawmakers may want to close a loophole that helps defendants evade conviction even with evidence that they had a blood alcohol level above the legal .08% limit. Defendants are allegedly arguing that while their BAC may have been .08% at the time of the test, that it was lower when they were actually driving because the alcohol in their system had not yet metabolized.

In drunk driving cases that go to trial, Jack Cinquegrana found that juries acquit 58% of the time, but judges will find defendants not guilty 86% of time. Cinquegrana reviewed 57,000 OUI (DUI) cases, and interviewed lawyers and judges for the study.