Michigan cop’s mistake leads to $320,000 deal with Japanese man wrongly accused of drunken driving

By ED WHITE
Associated Press

A Michigan village has agreed to a $320,000 settlement with a man from Japan who was wrongly accused of drunken driving. It turns out that a Fowlerville police officer badly misread a breath test. Ryohei Akima blew a 0.02 on the test. But it was mistakenly read by Officer Caitlyn Peca as 0.22. That’s nearly three times over Michigan’s blood-alcohol limit for driving. During the 2020 incident, Peca told a colleague, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” Akima was in Michigan on a work visa. Charges of driving while intoxicated were dropped when a blood sample further showed that he wasn’t drunk.