Ex Parte Coulliette
Ex Parte Coulliette
Opinion
The defendant Huston Waymor Coulliette was charged with the misdemeanor offenses of driving on the wrong side of the road and driving under the influence of alcohol. The Shelby County District Court found Coulliette guilty of the charged offenses. Coulliette appealed to the Shelby County Circuit Court for a trial de novo, by jury. Before trial, Coulliette *Page 794 moved to suppress the blood-alcohol test results from Intoxilyzer 5000 ("I-5000") tests administered to Coulliette after his arrest. The test results were .24 and .25. The trial court denied the motion to suppress and, likewise, at trial, denied several oral motions by Coulliette to exclude the test results. A jury found Coulliette guilty of the charged offenses, and the trial court adjudged him guilty and sentenced him accordingly.
Appealing to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Coulliette stated:
"Appellant herein submits this his appeal on one issue: Did appellant prove the lack of `scientific acceptability' in the record (history) keeping process of the `logs' to cause the trial court to commit error in admission of test results? And, as a direct consequence thereof, was the jury affected, adversely, by the admission of tests results, thereby denying appellant of a fair trial."
Coulliette cited Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
Holding in an unpublished memorandum that Coulliette had not preserved this issue for review, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed Coulliette's convictions and sentences. Coulliette v. State, (No. CR-99-2204, March 23, 2001)
Before us, Coulliette argues that the Court of Criminal Appeals erred in holding that he did not preserve his issue for review. This opinion will address only this preservation issue now before us.
For preservation, Coulliette relies on his motion to suppress, which the trial court denied after receiving evidence and arguments at a full hearing. The evidence at the hearing tended to prove that the Department of Forensic Sciences and the Department of Public Safety intentionally prevented information about malfunctions and errors in I-5000 machines from being disclosed in the logbooks kept for those machines. In the suppression motion proceedings, Coulliette argued essentially only that this practice deprived him of discovery he was due and corrupted proceedings based on the results of I-5000 blood-alcohol tests. In the proceedings before the trial court on the motion to suppress, Coulliette did not in any words or in any way argue the issue of scientific acceptability or the law of either Daubert or Frye, the threshold issue and law he later presented to the Court of Criminal Appeals for review.
"Review on appeal is restricted to questions and issues properly and timely raised at trial." Newsome v. State,
Acree v. State,"The motion [to suppress] did not give the trial court notice of the specific issues [Coulliette] . . . raise[d] in his brief to [the Court of Criminal Appeals]. Therefore, the trial court did not have the opportunity to rectify these alleged errors. . . . [Coulliette's] motion was not sufficient to preserve the issues presented by [him] in his brief."
AFFIRMED.
MOORE, C.J., and HOUSTON, SEE, LYONS, BROWN, HARWOOD, WOODALL, and STUART, JJ., concur.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Ex Parte Huston Waymor Coulliette. (In Re: Huston Waymor Coulliette v. State of Alabama).
- Cited By
- 74 cases
- Status
- Published