More than 20,000 people accused of drunken driving in New Jersey could have their cases tossed based on a Tuesday ruling of the state's Supreme Court. 
 
 In a unanimous decision, the high court found criminal charges against a State Police sergeant who was in charge of calibrating breath-testing devices made the test results from five counties inadmissible as evidence. 
 
 The court vacated the conviction of a woman who pleaded guilty to drunken driving based on a result from one of those machines - and then died while waiting for the legal fight to finish. 
 
 It also ordered state authorities to notify anyone whose case involved results from machines Sgt. Marc Dennis handled that those results weren't scientifically sound. 
 
 The decision opens the floodgates for thousands of people to challenge DWI convictions that occurred over nearly a decade. 
 
 20K DWI cases now in jeopardy 
 
 In 2016, Dennis was accused of lying on official documents about performing a legally required temperature check while calibrating just three machines, known as Alcotest devices, which gauge the blood-alcohol level of accused drunken drivers. 
 
 The criminal case against Dennis is still pending. Reached Tuesday, his attorney said the sergeant maintains his innocence. 
 
 The accusations called into question any test result involving a machine Dennis handled, including devices used by local police in Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset, and Union counties between 2008 and 2016. 
 
 The disclosure prompted a New Jersey woman, Eileen Cassidy, to seek to withdraw a guilty plea she entered in Spring Lake Municipal Court based on the results of a breath test. Cassidy died of a terminal illness in March, but the justices still ruled on the case because of the "significant public importance" of the issue. 
 
 State authorities maintained that the temperature check Dennis was accused of skipping was one of several "redundancies and fail-safes" to ensure the readings are accurate and that omitting that one step did not invalidate the results. New Jersey is the only state that requires the step, they argued. 
 
 But the Supreme Court, siding with Judge Joseph Lisa, who was appointed as a "special master" to handle the issue, found the omission of the step raised "substantial doubts" about the reliability of the machines. 
 
 County prosecutors began notifying defendants in 2016 that their cases could be thrown out, but those cases had been on hold pending the Supreme Court's ruling. On Tuesday, the court ordered state authorities to "notify all affected defendants of our decision ... so that they may take appropriate action." 
 
 Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said at an unrelated event Tuesday that his office was reviewing the decision. 
 
 "We're still coming up with guidance for our county prosecutors and municipal prosecutors who handle many of these cases," he said. 
 
 It's unclear how many cases will ultimately be tossed. Breath tests are an important part of DWI cases, but a person can still be convicted of drunken driving without one. 
 
 Michael Hobbie, the Eatontown attorney who represented Cassidy, said the pool of 20,667 includes an unknown number of people who may have been found not guilty at trial, or were convicted on the observation of the officers at the scene rather than a breathalyzer result. 
 
 What's more, Hobbie said, defendants have to come forward to challenge their conviction, and because the pool of cases goes back years, many of them may have already served their license suspensions and other punishments in the time that has passed. 
 
 "Are you going to want to go out and hire a lawyer and go prosecute this case again?" he said. 
 
 S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook. ||||| TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A ruling issued Tuesday by the New Jersey Supreme Court could cause more than 20,000 drunken driving convictions to be vacated. 
 
 The justices unanimously found that criminal charges pending against a state police sergeant made breath-testing device test results from five counties inadmissible as evidence. 
 
 Sgt. Marc Dennis was in charge of calibrating the devices, and authorities have alleged that he skipped a required step in the calibration process. Dennis has denied any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to records tampering and other charges. 
 
 The court's decision means that as many as 20,667 DWI convictions could now be challenged, according to state authorities and the lawyer for the now-dead plaintiff who brought the case that the court ruled on. 
 
 The accusations against Dennis called into question any test result involving a machine he handled, including devices used by local police in Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset, and Union counties between 2008 and 2016. 
 
 State authorities have maintained that the step Dennis allegedly skipped was one of several redundancies and fail-safes meant to ensure the readings are accurate. They claim that omitting that one step didn't invalidate the results, noting New Jersey is the only state that requires the step. 
 
 The Supreme Court, though, sided with Judge Joseph Lisa, who was appointed as a special master to handle the issue. He found the step omission raised substantial doubts about the reliability of the machines. 
 
 As part of their decision, the justices ordered state authorities to notify anyone whose case involved results from machines Dennis calibrated. They must tell them that those results were not scientifically sound, so they can decide whether they want to go to court and seek to have their convictions vacated. ||||| [What you need to know to start your day: Get New York Today in your inbox.] 
 
 More than 20,000 drunken-driving convictions in New Jersey could be in jeopardy after the state’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that breathalyzer tests used to win those judgments were inadmissible. 
 
 The unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court stems from criminal charges brought more than two years ago against a State Police sergeant who was accused of falsifying calibration records on breath test devices that were used in five of New Jersey’s 21 counties. 
 
 It is unclear how state courts and law enforcement officials will now proceed. The Supreme Court ruling does not automatically expunge all the drunken-driving convictions, but the justices did note that defendants tested by the affected breath machines could now seek to challenge their convictions. The decision also raises questions about cases that are still moving through the judicial system. 
 
 “We’ll be issuing guidance shortly for our county prosecutors and municipal prosecutors over how to handle those cases,” Gurbir Grewal, the New Jersey attorney general, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
– A lot of drunk drivers in New Jersey could end up getting away with it because one police officer allegedly failed to do his job properly. The state's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that some 20,667 people accused of drunk driving could have their cases tossed because of Sgt. Marc Dennis, who allegedly failed to perform a temperature check while calibrating machines used to check blood-alcohol levels, NJ.com reports. The ruling means that test results from five of New Jersey's 21 counties—Middlesex, Monmouth, Ocean, Somerset, and Union—are inadmissible as evidence if they involve "Alcotest" machines that Dennis handled. A criminal case against the officer, who denies wrongdoing, is still pending. It's not clear how many convictions will actually be vacated—some defendants will have been found not guilty, while others could have been convicted on other evidence. State authorities told the top court that the step Dennis allegedly skipped is only required in New Jersey, the AP reports. The judges ordered the state to notify people who could seek to have DWI convictions vacated because of the ruling, though lawyer Matthew W. Reisig predicts a "hornets' nest" lies ahead in the courts. "The state at some point is going to notify people, but we don’t know if they are notifying the correct people," he tells the New York Times. "I have zero confidence that the state knows who the affected people are." (This driver was involved in a fatal DUI crash 90 minutes after police let him go.)