California parole board denies incarcerated man a hearing based on ‘potential false-positive’ alcohol test

Glen Stellmacher

Apr 16, 2026

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Two weeks before Roque Martinez was set to go before the California Board of Parole Hearings, in June 2024, he was notified that he’d tested positive for opiates.

“I have not used,” Martinez, 55, told Prism, “so it was a huge deal to me. It was almost like going into panic mode.” On advice from his lawyer, the positive drug test forced Martinez to remain behind bars for three more years and postpone his parole hearing until June 2027, after almost 21 years already served.

But while Martinez has been waiting, he received a letter from California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS), viewed by Prism, informing him that he’d been screened for opiates during a period when Quest Diagnostics had changed the reagent, a critical component used in its drug tests, resulting in an abnormal surge of positive test results across California prisons.

The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and San Quentin News reported on a testing regime thought to have yielded almost 6,000 false-positive test results across California’s population in state custody. 

“I’ve already postponed—so to speak—my freedom because of a false positive,” Martinez said. He decided to petition to move up the date of his parole hearing.

But the parole board denied his request in October 2025. In the letter explaining its decision, viewed by Prism, the parole board justified its denial by noting that Martinez had tested positive for a different substance: alcohol. Martinez told the state corrections department that he had not consumed any alcohol, he told Prism. 

The parole board’s deputy commissioner who reviewed his file found that Martinez’s own doctor described the result as a “potential false positive.” Martinez did not know his doctor made that comment. 

For Martinez, who remains inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, the medical screening tests have needlessly prolonged his imprisonment and directly limited his chances to step outside prison for good. 

He’s not alone. CalMatters reported in February that many in the custody of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) have been denied parole based solely on drug test results, many of which were thought to be false-positives. But Martinez was denied an earlier parole hearing based on tests for alcohol, a legal substance outside of prison—a situation that medical experts and prison advocates say is highly unusual and damaging to incarcerated people committed to reentry.

Drug screening as part of a patient’s medical treatment plan while incarcerated is meant to assist in the patient’s health outcomes, according to the CCHCS Substance Use Disorder and Intoxication and Withdrawal Care Guide, and the results are not to be shared with prison staff. However, the parole board has a legal exemption to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that allows it to access personal medical files, according to its handbook. 

In Martinez’s case, the parole board denied his petition based only on drug-screening results, despite evidence of a potential false-positive and Martinez’s laudatory record. 

“This behavior by the parole board is something that they’ve explicitly been told not to do,” said Polari, a primary care physician and addiction specialist at CCHCS. “Despite this information, they’ve continued to use these tests in punitive ways.”

Polari is using a pseudonym out of concern that patients they’ve advocated for could face retaliation. Polari has not treated Martinez personally.

With Martinez’s consent, Prism showed Polari his alcohol test results. 

“Something’s weird. It’s just very uncommon,” Polari said of the test results. Polari pointed to a part of the results that showed Martinez testing positive for the alcohol metabolite ethyl sulfate and negative for the alcohol metabolite ethyl glucuronide—two similar substances that Polari said are typically either both positive or both negative. “It’s bizarre.”

Elizabeth Sinofsky, president of reentry support organization From Bars to Brilliance, told Prism that the parole board’s reliance on the alcohol testing was “really egregious and very reckless.”

“It hurts people in the end,” said Sinofsky. 

Sinofsky has worked with Martinez, who participated in one of her organization’s programs. 

“He’s really on a good path to healing, and he works on himself every day,” she said. “I’ve talked to a lot of people and I’ve had a lot of people try to manipulate or pretend. He’s pretty authentic. I got a good sense of who he is and what he’s trying to accomplish and become.”

Though he was determined to be eligible for the Elderly Parole Program in December 2022, Martinez has been denied an opportunity to sit in front of the parole board until 2027.

“I’m being held in prison based on false positives, and that’s the truth of it,” Martinez said.

The Board of Parole Hearings referred Prism to CDCR’s Office of Public and Employee Communications. 

Kyle Buis, a CDCR public information officer for health care communications, told Prism in an email statement, “The Board of Parole Hearings reviewed hearing transcripts of every incarcerated person who was denied parole between April 1, 2024 and April 17, 2025, and tested positive for opiates between March 31, 2024 and July 31, 2024. Testing results for alcohol and other substances were not affected.”

A CDCR official also told Prism that after the revelations about potential false positive opioid test results, parole board attorneys reviewed cases to see if, in their view, there was enough evidence without the positive drug screening to support denying parole to an incarcerated individual. If not, they ordered a new hearing. Based on the review, 15 people were referred for another review to determine whether their hearing date should be advanced, the official said.

Jennifer Petrella, a Quest Diagnostics spokesperson, told Prism in an email, “Our presumptive (i.e., screening) test for the alcohol metabolite [ethyl glucuronide] was not affected by the opiate presumptive test reagent issue that happened nearly two years ago. The opiate and alcohol metabolite tests are two distinct tests using different standards and reagents.” 

Problems with testing

Martinez is open about having opioid use disorder. He told Prism that he is enrolled in a recovery program offered to anyone incarcerated at California prisons, called Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) and is a leader in the recovery community at his prison. 

“I’ve really invested in my recovery, and I take it seriously. It’s not for parole; it’s not to go home. My recovery is a true life change that I’ve made, and I would hope that the parole board can see this,” Martinez said. “I’m trusting in the process, and I hope that they can see the person that I am today.”

While enrolled in MAT, Martinez is prescribed buprenorphine to help reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms.

I’ve really invested in my recovery, and I take it seriously. It’s not for parole; it’s not to go home. My recovery is a true life change that I’ve made, and I would hope that the parole board can see this,.

Roque Martinez, incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility

CCHCS guidance states that urine drug screening “is a clinical tool to help providers monitor the disease, adherence to treatment, and to keep the patient safe. It is not intended to determine punitive measures.”

The guidance also emphasizes, in an underlined sentence, “Under no circumstance are the [urine drug screen] results to be shared with custody staff.”

Polari said the primary reason for a patient like Martinez to get serial testing is to look for the drug being prescribed and for possible relapse of substances they are in treatment for. “Unfortunately, Quest pulls a full smattering of urine drug screens with the buprenorphine,” Polari said.

In response to a California Public Records Act request, CCHCS said that Quest Diagnostics urine testing is done through Health Net Federal Services (HNFS), which holds a master contract directly with CCHCS. The contract, which Prism obtained through another request, does not mention any policies concerning urine testing.

A spokesperson for HNFS’s parent company Centene Corporation, told Prism that HNFS’s responsibility is maintaining the group of doctors, clinics, hospitals, labs, and other health care providers contracted to serve patients,and processing related health care claims.

Quest Diagnostics tested for a battery of substances unrelated to Martinez’s opioid use disorder, including prescription medications, pain killers, metabolites, and drugs.

“In all cases, a healthcare provider with CCHCS makes the decision as to which tests to order and decisions regarding the results,” Petrella, the Quest spokesperson, told Prism. But Polari told Prism that CCHCS doctors only have one default choice when ordering a urine screening test: the full battery, with no option to narrow the scope of testing.

Polari said, “You’re always going to have the potential for false positives and false negatives” through presumptive screening tests, but the overly broad battery of testing increases the chances of false positives for substances with which a patient has no medical history. This can become a problem when the Board of Parole examines patients’ private medical records to determine whether they get to go home. 

For each urinary screening test administered in August 2024, October 2024, and January 2025, Martinez tested positive for ethyl sulfate and negative for ethyl glucuronide. 

“Usually these things correlate together,” Polari told Prism. “Their window of detection overlaps a lot. In this case, I would say there is something a little fishy to me, particularly with the discordance.”

That’s why the authorities on addiction medicine , including the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry and the American Society of Addiction Medicine, do not recommend the use of urine drug screening for any punitive purpose. “They are meant to be clinical tools to start a conversation,” Polari said.

Polari said that using discordant test results to deny someone their freedom “doesn’t fundamentally make sense from a medical perspective.” Yet that’s exactly what the California Board of Parole Hearings did in Martinez’s case. 

One year prior to the parole board’s denial, Martinez filed a health care grievance to CDCR, writing that his positive test results for alcohol were “not possible” and that he “100% categorically” had not consumed any alcohol. Within his grievance, Martinez requested all the CDCR policies and procedures for urine analysis testing, storage, and contamination. That information was never provided to him, he said.

Concerns about handling

Some individuals incarcerated in California have also raised alarm about potential handling issues that may also impact a test result.

Michael Perez, also incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, told Prism that he was handed a cup on March 13 for his urine sample that was labeled with another person’s name. When Perez raised this concern to the phlebotomist, he said the phlebotomist took the cup back and told him he wasn’t on the list to provide a urine sample that day. Perez said that security cameras captured the interaction and that he filed a grievance directly with CCHCS over the incident. Prism has not viewed the video footage, and CDCR declined to provide Perez’s grievance to Prism, saying that “grievances are exempt from disclosure” under California state law.

Polari told Prism that they have heard concerns about urine samples being switched.

Perez told Prism that he’d also received false-positive tests for opiates in April and July 2024, during the period when Quest Diagnostics changed its reagent. But Perez told Prism that his doctors at Mule Creek State Prison, his residence in 2024, wrote him off. “The doctor was very disrespectful, saying, ‘you’re a drug addict, you need to take accountability, our tests are extremely accurate,’” Perez said. “I had to remove myself from the doctor’s presence because I’m not trying to be the person that I was.”   

In February 2025, Perez was transferred to Richard J. Donovan, and he again raised the issue of false positives to another doctor. However, Perez told Prism that his new doctor also dismissed his concerns, saying that the urine tests were “extremely accurate.”

“A week after I saw the doctor, I got a letter in the mail,” Perez said—the letter Martinez had also received notifying thousands inside California prisons that they had potentially falsely tested positive for opiates.

“I’m responsible for what I put in my body,” Perez said. He has since disenrolled in the MAT program, he said, specifically because he’d received false-positive test results. Perez said he doesn’t want any more false-positive tests that could potentially affect his chances of being granted parole.

Petition to advance parole hearing denied

After Martinez received discordant test results for alcohol metabolites for the second time, in October 2024, he wanted to understand if his own body was creating a false positive or altering the test results. His doctor at the time drew blood and ran further tests, and documented that nothing Martinez was naturally producing would have caused the positive result for ethyl sulfate.

Martinez said his previous doctor “just brushed me off, not really believing me. Not just me, everybody on the yard that had him as a [primary care physician]. We were really frustrated with the level of care that he was providing.”

“He was very dismissive,” Martinez added. “He just would clock in and not really try to deal with the patient care, not going to a conversation, and really rush us out of the room.” 

Around this time, Martinez was moved to another block at Richard J. Donovan, to B Yard. 

At his new B Yard residence, Martinez filed a grievance, viewed by Prism, to CCHCS and started seeing a new primary care provider, who the Board of Parole Hearings later found documented Martinez’s urine toxicology screening results as “potentially a false positive” in his medical records.

However the parole board cited only a note his previous doctor scribed in his medical records as proof that Martinez had consumed alcohol. “A note from [the doctor] dated December 2, 2024 essentially states that Martinez does not have an underlying medical condition that would have affected the results of the test,” wrote Board of Parole Hearings Deputy Commissioner Mary Dang in the letter denying Martinez’s petition to advance his parole hearing.

Dang acknowledged that another doctor who reviewed Martinez’s records identified the test results as a “potential false positive.” CDCR did not disclose to Prism if Dang has any medical training. 

“Given the information at hand, the author must conclude that the positive test results for Alcohol Metabolites recorded on January 7, 2025, October 2, 2024, and August 27, 2024, are indeed not false positives. In conclusion, the incarcerated individual did not maintain a disciplinary-free status as he consumed alcohol on three separate occasions,” Dang wrote. “For the reasons stated above, and in the discretion afforded under PC 3041.5(d)(2), the Petition to Advance is denied and the Board will not advance Roque Martinez’s next hearing.”

I’m really just being falsely accused of something, which is a hard pill to swallow.

Roque Martinez

“That was the hardest blow to me because I’m really just being falsely accused of something, which is a hard pill to swallow,” Martinez told Prism.

A CDCR official told Prism that the Board of Parole Hearings has the authority to review any parole consideration denial to determine if it should be advanced at any time if there’s been a change in circumstance or new information, and referred Prism to the Board of Parole Hearing’s handbook.

Prism was not able to find Dang’s contact information and asked the parole board to provide it. The board wrote that Prism should contact CDCR’s communications office. CDCR said that it can’t disclose information about someone’s testing due to patient privacy laws.

“My mouth was on the floor because I couldn’t believe that they didn’t want to even dig a little bit deeper to find out why, and it cost him a parole hearing,” Sinofsky of From Bars to Brilliance told Prism. “It’s already bad enough that people are hopeless. There are so many challenges. I couldn’t believe they weren’t even willing to listen.”

Polari also took issue with the parole board’s approach.

“The fact that they’re taking the medical record and essentially, in my mind, cherry-picking what they want to give an ‘objective’ justification for denial of parole is expedient and completely outside the realm of how we practice medicine and how these tests are meant to be taken,” Polari said. They added that the parole board is using the false positive “as a one-off test to deny somebody their freedom for a disease, alcohol use disorder, which they do not have. They have opioid use disorder.” 

Martinez told Prism that he has no medical history of alcohol use disorder.

Buis said that the parole board “encourages incarcerated people to seek treatment for their substance-use issues so they can rehabilitate and safely reenter the community. For many parole candidates who come before the Board for a suitability hearing, substance use is a risk factor that contributed to their commitment offense.” 

“It’s clear to me that the board of parole does not know what they’re talking about when it comes to interpreting these medical test results,” Polari told Prism. “It’s really upsetting and brazen behavior. It discourages people who could benefit from the MAT program from participating.”

Ernesto “Tito” Rivera, who works for the federal government and has been friends with Martinez since the two met at trade school in 1990, told Prism, “It’s just unbelievable what’s going on. They’re not even looking or investigating what could be the cause of this because this is not just happening to one person.”

The Vera Institute of Justice has called California “one of the epicenters of mass incarceration in the United States, incarcerating more people than any other state except Texas,” despite the state’s liberal reputation. At least 41,464 people are eligible for a parole hearing within the California prison system.

“It’s hard because these guys don’t have a voice. We have to bring this to light because once this is brought to light, these injustices can stop,” Rivera told Prism. He said that CDCR is “failing to change the way they’re doing things. They’re weaponizing these tests against inmates. They understand there’s a problem with false positives.” 

For now, Martinez is enrolled in college classes and working toward a social psychology degree. He has received numerous laudatory reports in his record and facilitates self-help groups every night of the week and a group on the yard for those who work during the week and don’t have time to attend other sessions. 

His parole hearing has been tentatively pushed to June 2027—meaning four and a half more years in captivity beyond his initial parole eligibility date.

“That’s a long time in prison,” Sinofsky said. “This is devastating for someone who’s been working really hard to wait years because of a false positive.” 

Martinez is trying to maintain a strong and calm perspective.

“One of the things in recovery that I have learned is that life is not perfect; life is going to throw me curveballs,” he said. “I’m ready to go home, I’ve never been more ready.”

Martinez said he is proud of how he is handling being falsely accused. “The old me would have dealt with this in an unhealthy way. Today, I’m talking to the right people, I’m staying calm, I’m putting in the proper paperwork, and I’m handling this pro-socially. I think this is ultimately showing that I do know how to deal with adversity, and that’s the silver lining that I see with all this.”

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor

Glen Stellmacher