About 275 breath tests for suspected DWIs may have been impacted by “human error,” the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Monday.
Prosecutors and the Minnesota Attorney General’s office will need to examine each case individually to make a determination, according to BCA Superintendent Drew Evans.
DataMaster machines are stationed at law enforcement offices around the state, used by officers to give breath tests to people suspected of driving while intoxicated and taken into custody. Errors have been “identified … in particular when changing out a dry gas cylinder that is used for a control test,” Evans said.
The more detailed information from Evans came after the BCA announced Friday that it had ordered all law enforcement agencies in the state to suspend usage of DataMaster instruments until they verified that gas cylinder data was correctly entered into each instrument.
It’s a 5-minute inspection and then law enforcement agencies can return to using them, Evans said. St. Paul police and the sheriff’s offices for Ramsey, Dakota and Washington counties were among those who said Monday they have resumed using the breath tests.
Roseville-based attorney Chuck Ramsay said he discovered the issue in 2023 in Olmsted County, then again in August while defending a man charged with DWI in Aitkin County. On Oct. 2, the prosecutor’s office dismissed the charges.
Throughout the state, 19,000-20,000 Datamaster tests are conducted each year and there have been 15,000 tests so far this year, according to the BCA.
The state began deploying the DataMaster in 2010, with the bulk going out in 2012, Ramsay said.
“Nobody knows right now how many have been affected,” Ramsay said, adding it could reach into the thousands.
Initial errors were discovered in Aitkin, Winona and Chippewa counties, and the BCA said they became aware on Friday of two more instruments with data entry errors related to gas cylinder installation in Hennepin and Olmsted counties.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean, even if there were errors, that the test results themselves were not reliable,” Evans said. “… This is a very technical piece in this equipment. The reliability of the results really do need to be examined on a case-by-case basis.”
220 machines throughout state
There are 220 DataMaster instruments and about 4,500 law enforcement officers certified to use them in Minnesota. They go through three days of training and get a 4-hour refresher every two years, according to the BCA.
The DataMaster machines are placed at various law enforcement departments and are used by multiple agencies in the geographic area.
A DataMaster machine is seen in the pre-booking area outside the Ramsey County jail in St. Paul on Oct. 13, 2025. (Mara H. Gottfried / Pioneer Press)
“This has not impacted Minnesota law enforcement’s ability to conduct DWI enforcement across Minnesota,” Evans said. Many DataMaster machines have already been examined “and they can go right back online because they’re accurate in the testing process,” Evans added.
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Ramsay, the criminal defense attorney, said he knows of fewer than 10 cases where DWI charges have been dismissed by prosecutors and those cases have been outside of the metro.
“I’m unaware in the metro of any (being dismissed),” he said. “But it’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of how soon.”
In Ramsay’s client’s case, the state attorney general’s office reversed the man’s driver’s license revocation.
“The BCA agreed with me that not only was my client’s test invalid, but all 73 samples that were run on that for that entire year were also invalid,” he said.
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The BCA has a calibration team that manages, inspects and maintains DataMasters. They will now be the staff that changes out the gas cylinders, Evans said.
“By bringing this change process into a fewer number of people, we’re able to eliminate some of those errors along the way,” Evans said.
There has also been an instance discovered of the wrong cylinder, which was not provided by the BCA, being installed, according to the BCA.
Ramsay noted that the “bad control” isn’t used to measure a driver’s alcohol concentration, but to ensure that readings are accurate.
“The BCA will concede without that, they lose that guarantee of accuracy,” he said.
Ramsay suggested that anyone in Minnesota who has a pending DWI case plead not guilty.
“And if they have pending license revocation, they should hire an attorney to challenge it,” he said.
When it comes to past convictions, “that’s one of the ways it gets really messy,” he said.
“Who this really impacts are commercial vehicle drivers because if they get a DWI, for the most part, their career is over. And that, I mean, that could be devastating to a family forever. And those are the people that I really feel for and others who may have spent time in jail or may be in jail now.”
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As of late Monday afternoon, the BCA had not heard from additional law enforcement agencies about finding any problems in their inspections, Evans said.
“But we’ll be working as part of this inspection process to determine if any others have challenges with them,” he said.
DataMaster machines are calibrated at the BCA each year, and staff has not seen the same issues with the cylinders in the past, according to Evans.
When the BCA was first notified of the problem, “we had no reason to believe it was a more widespread problem with the instrumentation,” he said.
Most DWI cases are misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors that are prosecuted by city attorneys, according to Ramsey County Attorney’s Office spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein. The felony cases prosecuted by the county attorney’s office “are a small subset of the overall number of DWI cases,” he said.
“We have not been made aware of any felony DWI cases that have been presented to our office which involved the use of the device you reference,” Gerhardstein said. “If that changes, we will respond accordingly as justice requires.”
Mary Divine contributed to this report.
