State v. King, Unpublished Decision (3-28-2003)
State v. King, Unpublished Decision (3-28-2003)
Opinion of the Court
{¶ 3} Cincinnati Police Officer Charles Beebe, an accident investigator, arrived at the scene of the accident at approximately 4:05 a.m. Beebe testified (at the trial, but not at the suppression hearing1) that he could smell the odor of alcohol on King before he was transported away by ambulance. Beebe communicated this information to Officer Paul Grein, who attempted to have the paramedics on the scene draw blood from King. The paramedics refused, however, because of King's critical status. Beebe therefore dispatched Police Specialist Greg Kaufman to University Hospital to obtain a sample of King's blood.
{¶ 4} Kaufman arrived at the hospital at approximately 4:30 a.m. and found King lying on a gurney, attended by medical personnel. Kaufman, who did not have a warrant, waited and observed. Kaufman testified that King was wearing a neck brace, with tubes extruding from either his mouth or nose, but that he was able, when asked by the nurse, to write down his telephone number. It was Kaufman's impression that King, despite his physical condition, was alert and his mental faculties were intact. The nurse who was attending to King, Jill Bowman, testified that King had received narcotic pain medication, Fentanyl, but that she still considered him fully oriented to time and place. According to Bowman, before taking King's blood, she performed a "Glas[g]ow Coma Test" and scored him at the highest number of the scale, meaning that she believed that King fully understood what was being said to him.
{¶ 5} Kaufman testified at the suppression hearing that when he arrived at the hospital, his purpose was not to place King under arrest. However, after waiting for the physicians to leave, Kaufman read to King first his Miranda rights and then recited to him language from the ALS (administrative license suspension) form designed to inform citizens of the implied-consent law under R.C.
{¶ 6} After reading additional language from the form, Kaufman asked King if he would consent to a blood sample being drawn. According to Kaufman, King responded with an unintelligible grunt. Kaufman testified that he asked for King's consent a second time, and that again King grunted unintelligibly. Kaufman's impression was that King was being deliberately obtuse. Bowman then interceded, asking the question herself, and King, according to both Kaufman and Bowman, responded by clearly articulating his approval. Kaufman testified that he did not ask King to sign the form, which provided a space for that purpose, because King's arms were by that time strapped to the gurney.
{¶ 7} The blood sample was drawn at approximately 5:00 a.m. After analysis the blood-alcohol content of the sample was shown to be .10 percent grams of alcohol per one hundred milliliters of blood, or right at the minimum prohibited level. The chief toxicologist for the Hamilton County Coroner's Office, Dr. Robert Powers, testified that alcohol dissipates from the blood at a rate of .02 percent per hour. He also testified that the "outside window" of the margin for error for the testing was five percent, but that his office's quality control reduced the margin to "actually two percent or under." A separate blood sample taken by hospital personnel as part of King's medical treatment after the accident was analyzed by a toxicologist from the Health Alliance Laboratory, who found a blood-alcohol level of .10 to .104 grams of alcohol per one hundred milliliters of blood.
{¶ 8} King was arrested eighteen days later and charged with two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide. King did not testify during his trial. His friend Goodrum testified that King did not appear intoxicated when they left Annie's together, and that he remembered the sensation of King's Infiniti hitting a wet spot before the vehicle spun out of control. (Goodrum was later knocked unconscious when the car struck the guardrail.) King also produced testimony from Cincinnati Police Officer Ryan Hudson that Columbia Parkway was prone to overflow during heavy rains, and that the police had, on a number of occasions in the past, shut down the exact area where the accident occurred due to hazardous water conditions. Another friend of King's, Verdial Lewis, who was driving in a separate vehicle ahead of the Infiniti, testified that the "traction control" light of his vehicle had earlier become illuminated over the same patch of roadway where King's vehicle spun out. Lewis also testified that King could not possibly have been driving seventy-five miles per hour, as he himself had slowed down after spotting a police car on the berm shortly before encountering the wet spot, and that the Infiniti had not appeared to gain ground. Another friend of King's, Demetrias Cromwell, was driving a third vehicle, this one behind King, and he estimated King's speed at between 55 and 60 miles per hour. Cromwell also denied that King had given any appearance of being intoxicated before leaving Annie's. Finally, a traffic-accident reconstructionist hired by the defense testified that he had calculated King's speed at between 61 and 64 miles per hour, and also noted that the oversized tires on the Infiniti would have caused its speedometer to report a speed of five miles slower than the actual speed.
{¶ 9} In addition to the testimony that King was under the influence, the state presented the testimony of Beebe, as an accident reconstruction expert, that the "critical speed" for the roadway that morning was 74 miles per hour, and that, according to his calculations, King must have been going at least 75 miles per hour to have caused the accident. Such a speed, Beebe stated, was clearly unreasonable given the conditions. The state also presented the testimony of Wolfe's widow, Mary Beth Wolf, who stated that she and their young son would have been in the car with her husband had she not contracted an ear infection. Mary Beth Wolfe was further allowed to testify how the loss of her husband had affected her, how his death had meant the loss of his income, and how the couple had had no life insurance policy.
{¶ 11} The issues of weight and sufficiency involve two separate tests on review. Sufficiency is essentially a test of adequacy and asks not whether the state's evidence is to be believed, but, if it is believed, whether it is sufficient to support a conviction. See Statev. Thompkins,
{¶ 12} King argues that the blood samples taken from him were insufficient to establish a violation of R.C.
{¶ 13} King's argues that his convictions were contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence in view of the testimony of Goodrum, Lewis, and Cromwell that he did not appear intoxicated and that he was not speeding on Columbia Parkway. In King's reckoning, their testimony should have been accorded greater weight than the blood-sample evidence, the testimony of Beebe and Kaufman that he smelled of alcohol, and Beebe's testimony, as an expert on accident reconstruction, that the Infiniti had to have hit the wet spot at 75 miles per hour to have spun so wildly out of control. It is well settled, however, that the credibility of witnesses is a determination uniquely within the province of the jury, which has had the opportunity to observe their demeanor and make uniquely human assessments of their trustworthiness. As pointed out in Thompkins, to speak of the weight of the evidence is not to describe a mathematical formulation, but, rather, to examine the effect of the evidence in inducing belief. Id. at 387,
{¶ 14} Here the jury, after listening to the testimony of Goodrum, Lewis, and Cromwell, obviously chose not to believe their testimony that King was not intoxicated after a night out at a bar with these same three friends, when the medical tests indicated otherwise, or that King was observing the speed limit when he caused the accident that killed Wolfe, when the state's expert testified to the contrary that the accident required a speed of 75 miles per hour. Although there was certainly evidence on either side in this case, we cannot say, even sitting as a thirteenth juror, that the jury lost its way or committed a miscarriage of justice in convicting King, or that this is the exceptional case in which the evidence weighed heavily against a conviction.
{¶ 15} King's first and second assignments of error are, accordingly, overruled.
{¶ 17} We address first the threshold factual issue whether King actually indicated his consent to have the police draw a blood sample. King's argument that he did not — that he merely grunted indecipherable responses — ignores entirely the testimony that he verbalized a positive response after Nurse Bowman interceded and asked for his consent. Both Kaufman and Bowman testified that King did, in fact, verbally give his permission. In overruling King's motion to suppress, the trial court emphasized Bowman's testimony that King consented when she asked for his permission take his blood sample, as well as her testimony that King was "oriented to time, place and situation." Because the trial court's finding of a verbalized consent was supported by competent, credible evidence, and no clear error appears in its statements of historical fact, we are bound to accept its findings.Ornelas v. United States (1996),
{¶ 18} We must now independently determine, as a matter of law, and without deference to the trial court's conclusions, whether King's verbalization of his consent to the search was sufficient to justify the taking of his blood. Id. As noted, King contends that his consent, even if verbalized, was invalid under Ohio's implied-consent law because Kaufman had not placed him under arrest. This assertion is based upon Kaufman's testimony, at the suppression hearing, that his purpose at the hospital that morning was not to place King under arrest. As we have also noted, however, the first line of the ALS form that Kaufman then read to King informed him that that he was "now under arrest."
{¶ 19} R.C.
{¶ 20} Given the importance of an arrest for DUI in triggering the statutorily implied consent, an entire body of case law has arisen on the arrest requirement under R.C. 4911.191(A). Generally, four elements must coalesce in order for their to be an arrest under Ohio law: (1) an intent to arrest, (2) under real or pretended authority, (3) accompanied by some form of actual or constructive seizure or detention, (4) so that the person understands that he or she is not free to leave. State v. Darrah
(1980),
{¶ 21} Courts are divided on whether the mere rote recitation of language on the ALS form to a suspect, informing him that he is under arrest, is sufficient to imply an actual intent to arrest. Some courts have held that, in the absence of contradictory evidence, the rote recitation of the form is enough to manifest intent to arrest and to constitute a constructive seizure. See State v. Barr (Apr. 26, 1995), 9th Dist. No. 16822. Barr is not helpful here, however, because there is contrary evidence — Kaufman's statement that his purpose in going to the hospital was not to place King under arrest. Other courts, including this court, have held that a rote recitation of the ALS form is not sufficient of itself to constitute a valid arrest. State v Vickrey
(July 5, 1989), 1st Dist. No. C-880336.2 A separate, valid arrest must actually precede the reading of the ALS form because the mere reading of the form is not enough to constitute an arrest to trigger the implied consent. See State v. Rice (1998),
{¶ 22} As noted, the state argues that the issue of whether there was an arrest, and therefore a triggering of the implied consent law, is simply irrelevant because in this case King gave his actual consent to the test. We agree with the proposition that actual, voluntary consent to a blood test to determine alcohol content obviates the need for the state to establish the prerequisites of R.C.
{¶ 23} Several courts have reversed convictions where the consent appeared to have been more in the nature of acquiescence or submission to authority after the suspect was erroneously read the ALS warning without, in fact, being under arrest. See, e.g., State v. Gottfried
(1993),
{¶ 24} Here, King was told, pursuant to the language read to him from the ALS form, that he was under arrest and that he had to submit to the test or violate the law. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to imagine that the consent he gave was voluntary. Indeed, Kaufman's own testimony that King was playing games to avoid the questioning by grunting, would strongly indicate that he was not eager to volunteer his consent. We do note, however, that King did not testify at the suppression hearing, and therefore the record does not contain any testimony from him that he felt coerced into giving his consent after being read the ALS form. The burden is on the state, however, not King, to demonstrate a voluntary consent to a warrantless search. See Statev. Denune (1982),
{¶ 25} The state next argues, alternatively, that consent of any sort, actual, implied, or voluntary, was not legally necessary because the trial court found that the drawing of blood was justified under the evanescent-evidence exception established in Schmerber v. California
(1966),
{¶ 26} Although there was an arrest in Schmerber, the Court did not make its holding dependent upon the fact that the defendant had been arrested, only that there was probable cause for the DUI arrest. (As noted, the seizure of blood was held not to be an incident of the arrest.) Consequently, as one state supreme court has recently noted, "there now appears to be universal agreement among the courts that have addressed the question that an arrest in not integral to the Schmerber
holding and, consequently, that a warrantless extraction of blood from a driver lawfully suspected of DUI, does not violate the [F]ourth [A]mendment even in the absence of an arrest or actual consent." Statev. Entrekin (2002),
{¶ 27} Here, officers testified at the suppression hearing that there was not sufficient time to obtain a warrant for the blood sample. The blood sample was drawn by trained medical personnel using medically acceptable procedures. The determinative question becomes, then, whether the police had probable cause to suspect that King was guilty of driving while intoxicated before his blood was seized. As noted, Beebe, the officer at the scene who had the most contact with King, did not testify at the suppression hearing. Officer Grein testified, however, "Officer Beebe had told me he smelled alcohol on [King's] person." Although this was hearsay, such a statement is admissible at a suppression hearing and may be used to support a finding of probable cause. State v. Woodring
(1989),
{¶ 28} We hold that probable cause exists to arrest for driving while under the influence when in the early morning hours a vehicle clearly goes out of control, there is an accident, and the driver has the odor of alcoholic beverages on his breath.
{¶ 29} Accordingly, regardless of the issues involving consent and the application of the Ohio implied-consent law, the seizure of King's blood by the police was justified under Schmerber given the evanescent nature of the evidence and given that the police had probable cause to arrest King for driving under the influence. As this court has previously noted, "Ohio's implied-consent statute does not create a right of refusal or expand on the constitutional rights of a person suspected of driving under the influence." State v. Carter (Nov. 5, 1999), 1st Dist Nos. C-980942, C-980943, and C-980944. Further, as we also noted inCarter, provided that there is no constitutional violation involved in the taking of a blood sample, compliance with the procedures set forth in R.C.
{¶ 30} King's third assignment of error is overruled.
{¶ 33} Accordingly, all five of King's assignments of error are overruled and the judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
Judgment affirmed.
HILDEBRANDT, P.J., concurs.
PAINTER, J., concurs separately.
Painter, J. concurring.
{¶ 34} Judge Gorman's analysis is flawless. We are, however, breaking new ground, at least in Ohio.
{¶ 35} This is an unusual case. We have held that the driver's consent was not voluntary, because he was coerced, as a matter of law, by the reading of the ALS warnings. That is correct.
{¶ 36} We next hold that absent consent, if the officers have probable cause to arrest — whether or not an actual arrest occurs — they may draw blood without a warrant, if exigent circumstances exist. This holding would not have been possible before the legislature removed the words "no test shall be given" from the implied-consent law — because the statute indicated that following the implied-consent formula was the only way to obtain a test. This language is now gone, allowing the result here.
{¶ 37} We also hold that probable cause existed under the facts of this case: an accident, after 3:00 a.m., a vehicle out of control, and the driver smelling as if he had been drinking. The obviously erratic driving, coupled with the odor, is sufficient to constitute probable cause.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.