Michigan cop’s mistake leads to $320,000 deal with Japanese man wrongly accused of drunken driving
A Michigan village will pay $320,000 to a Japanese man wrongly accused of drunk driving after a police officer badly misread a breath test, court records show.
A Michigan village has agreed to a $320,000 settlement with a man from Japan who was wrongly accused of drunken driving after a police officer badly misread a breath test, court records show.
Ryohei Akima blew a 0.02 on the test, but it was mistakenly read by the Fowlerville officer as 0.22 — nearly three times over Michigan’s blood-alcohol limit for driving.
Caitlyn Peca, who was a rookie officer, told a colleague over the radio, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” according to a summary of the case.
Akima, a native of Yonago, Japan, was in the U.S. on a work visa in 2020. Charges of driving while intoxicated were dropped when a blood sample further showed that he wasn’t drunk.
Akima, 37, filed a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Peca’s actions violated the U.S. Constitution. A settlement was reached in January, a few months after a federal appeals court said the case could move forward.
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