For nearly a decade, California law enforcement agencies relied on flawed urine test kits that may have produced false or inflated alcohol readings in driving under the influence (DUI) and other criminal cases — and authorities say an untold number of convictions could now be in question.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the California Department of Justice alerted roughly 60 law enforcement agencies and seven district attorney’s offices this week that cases in their jurisdictions may have been affected by the faulty tests. The problem traces back to Andwin Scientific, a medical supply company based in Simi Valley, in Ventura County, which supplied urinalysis test kits to the state’s forensic lab in Santa Rosa beginning around 2016.
Katina Repp, director of the state’s lab in Santa Rosa, explained the flaw in a January 28 letter to the Sonoma County district attorney’s office. The test kits contained far less sodium fluoride than their labels indicated — about 100 milligrams instead of the 750 milligrams listed. Sodium fluoride is a preservative that stops urine samples from fermenting. Without enough of it, samples containing high levels of sugar or yeast could have fermented and generated alcohol on their own, potentially skewing test results.
“This may result in an artificially elevated alcohol level in the sample,” Repp wrote.
However, Repp also noted that for a sample to ferment, several conditions would have had to occur at the same time — including the tested person having diabetes-level sugar in their urine and an active yeast infection. “It is possible, under these ideal conditions described above, that some fermentation may have occurred,” she wrote, “However, this is still not likely as there was at least some sodium fluoride which would help preserve the sample.”
The state launched an audit after discovering the problem and ultimately flagged 97 tests showing alcohol levels at or near 0.04% — the legal limit for commercial drivers. That figure represents just 0.07% of all DUI and alcohol-related cases the state reviewed, officials said.
Sonoma County sits at the center of California’s wine country and is one of the affected jurisdictions. As first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, Sonoma County prosecutors identified nine criminal cases with convictions — mostly DUI cases — in which the faulty kits were used. Of 14 total tests run with the kits, five were part of investigations that did not result in charges.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Matthew Henning said only six cases in Sonoma County were ultimately flagged for deeper review, and in each one, prosecutors found enough additional evidence of intoxication that no further action was needed. In three other cases, the people who gave urine samples were not the defendants.
Attorneys in each flagged case were notified, including the public defender’s office. Assistant District Attorney Brian Staebell said his office waited to alert defense attorneys until it could identify which convictions involved the problematic tests. “It does seem to be limited in scope, and we’ve provided everything we can to defense attorneys to take action if they feel it’s appropriate,” Staebell said.
Sonoma County Public Defender Brian Morris said his office would examine every case. “When the government’s own lab acknowledges that faulty testing kits may have artificially inflated alcohol levels over a nine-year period, it raises serious concerns about the reliability of their forensic testing, internal controls, and safeguards,” Morris said in an email. The revelation, he added, “puts the integrity of convictions based on DOJ evidence in serious doubt.”
Morris also raised questions about the timeline. “We do not yet understand why it took so long for this information to reach the attorneys who represented the affected individuals, but we plan to take whatever steps are necessary to protect these individuals’ rights,” he said.
State officials said they first learned the tests were faulty in August 2025. Andwin Scientific stopped shipping the affected kits shortly after, and replacement kits sent since September 2025 contain the correct concentration of sodium fluoride. Representatives for Andwin Scientific did not respond to media requests for comment.
Large counties — including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Orange — operate their own forensic labs and were not affected. The state Justice Department told the Los Angeles Times in an email: “We have alerted the impacted agencies so they can conduct their own review of the case information.”
It now falls to local jurisdictions to carry out their own deeper reviews. The Sonoma County public defender’s office has not yet publicly stated what steps it plans to take, and the full scope of the issue across all affected California counties remains unclear.
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