To be charged with most crimes, you have to intentionally or recklessly break the law. This is not so with motor vehicle homicide. Unfortunately, anyone who drives could be distracted for just seconds, hit another car or a pedestrian and kill them. That’s all it takes. The Commonwealth only has to prove that you were negligent. And the penalties, if you are convicted, are steep, up to 2½ years of incarceration and 15 years loss of license.

However, the state police often make mistakes in their investigation and accident reconstruction. The investigation and reconstruction of a crash is highly technical and requires painstaking and meticulous investigation, documentation of the investigation, and complicated mathematical analysis of the evidence. Making even a minor mistake during this process can make the entire investigation and reconstruction of the accident totally unreliable.

The Commonwealth will usually use the Massachusetts State Police CARS (Collision and Accident Reconstruction Section) to investigate and perform the accident reconstruction. A state trooper will typically be the person to provide expert testimony on behalf of the Commonwealth at trial. A skilled motor vehicle homicide attorney can analyze the expert opinion and find any mistakes that the state police made during the reconstruction. Sometimes, even a minor mistake, like failing to document the investigation and reconstruction of an accident properly, can render the entire process inadmissible. In other instances, mistakes can cause the trooper’s opinion to be highly susceptible to cross examination at trial. We may be able to show a jury that the mathematical calculations are questionable, or that the trooper relied on improper or unreliable data.