State v. Presler
| Decision Date | 11 June 1999 |
| Docket Number | No. 97-438-C.A.,97-438-C.A. |
| Citation | 731 A.2d 699 |
| Parties | STATE v. Joseph PRESLER. |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
Present WEISBERGER, C.J., and LEDERBERG, BOURCIER, FLANDERS, and GOLDBERG, JJ.
Jane M. McSoley, Aaron L. Weisman, Providence, for Plaintiff.
Paula Lynch Hardiman, Paula Rosin, Providence, for Defendant.
This case came before the Court for oral argument on March 3, 1999, pursuant to an order entered on November 16, 1998, directing the parties to appear and show cause why the issues raised in the defendant's appeal should not be summarily decided. After hearing the arguments of counsel and examining the memoranda filed by the parties, we are of the opinion that cause has not been shown and that the issues raised by the appeal should be summarily decided.
Following his conviction by a Superior Court trial jury on one charge of driving under the influence of liquor or drugs, death resulting, G.L.1956 § 31-27-2.2, and one charge of driving so as to endanger, death resulting, § 31-27-1(a), and after sentence and entry of final judgment, Joseph Presler (defendant) appeals to this Court seeking reversal of his convictions and a new trial.
On March 13, 1994, Rhode Island State Police Corporal Joseph Galino (Galino) was operating his police vehicle in the southbound lane on Interstate Route 95 when he observed a vehicle coming northbound toward him in the roadway. He immediately activated the overhead lights on the police vehicle and attempted to alert the driver of the oncoming vehicle to the fact that it was being operated in the wrong highway. The driver of the oncoming vehicle apparently failed to observe the police cruiser's overhead flashing lights and Galino was forced to swerve away from the oncoming vehicle. As the vehicle passed him, Galino was able to observe in his rearview mirror that the vehicle had turned onto an exit ramp and was proceeding easterly, once again the wrong direction on Interstate Route 195 West. Within minutes, the errant vehicle collided head on with another vehicle traveling westerly on Route 195 West. The operator of that vehicle, Joseph Abilheira, was severely injured and later was pronounced dead at the local hospital. The driver of the errant vehicle, the defendant Joseph Presler, was also injured in the collision and was taken unconscious to the Rhode Island Hospital.
At the hospital, an emergency medical treatment nurse, Teresa Maine (Maine) noticed a strong smell of alcohol from the defendant. In order to facilitate diagnosis and treatment, hospital staff took blood from the defendant to determine, among other things, whether there was any alcohol in his bloodstream. State Police Trooper Raymond Studley who had earlier responded to the accident scene and had attended the defendant there, was present at the hospital when the defendant's blood was taken, but was not in the operating room where the procedure was performed. At one point, when nurse Maine was carrying the blood sample to the hospital laboratory for analysis, Trooper Studley walked along with her to the laboratory and inquired as to the defendant's condition. The test results of the defendant's blood serum revealed a blood alcohol level of .198.
The defendant later was indicted on the two driving death-related charges. Prior to trial on the charges, the defendant moved to suppress the results of the blood alcohol tests performed at the hospital emergency trauma unit. A Superior Court hearing justice granted that motion. On interlocutory appeal by the state, we reversed and entered an order in State v. Presler, No. 95-722-C.A. (R.I., order filed May 16, 1996), upholding the propriety of the hospital's blood taking and the admissibility of the blood alcohol test results, and remanding the case for trial in the Superior Court.
Apparently not content with our May 16 order, the defendant, after remand, proceeded to file a second motion to suppress the results of the blood-alcohol tests performed at the hospital. The defendant's second motion to suppress reiterated essentially all of the allegations and reasons contained in his first motion, but added a new allegation and challenge to the admissibility of the test results. The defendant now claims that his blood had been taken at the direction of the state police. The defendant's second suppression motion was taken up and heard by a different justice of the Superior Court and after the hearing, that justice denied the motion, finding that the blood had been taken pursuant to hospital protocol and rejecting the defendant's assertion that it had been taken at the direction of the state police. The defendant was later tried before a Superior Court jury on the two indictment charges.
At that trial, the defendant testified. He told the trial justice and jury that he never drinks alcohol and that on the evening prior to the accident, he had attended a party where he had consumed only nonalcoholic drinks. He testified that he could not remember going to a nightclub prior to the party, but testified that other persons may claim that he had been there; that he did not remember leaving the party or recall driving a car on the highway; and that he at no time ever entered the vehicle (which he had been driving, and was found in, at time of the accident). The defendant additionally testified that at the party he had been attacked and beaten by four men who had carved a "V" into his ankle to brand him as a thief.1 As part of his defense, the defendant theorized and told the jury that someone had put a potion in his soft drink which then turned him into a "zombie" and caused him to lose his mind and that subsequently, someone caused him to involuntarily consume alcohol.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on both of the criminal indictment charges and the defendant now appeals. In support of his appeal, the defendant raises two issues. First, the defendant claims that the trial justice erred in denying his second motion to suppress the results of the blood-alcohol tests performed on the blood taken from him at the hospital. Second, the defendant contends that during trial, the state's prosecutor improperly attempted to refresh his memory during cross-examination.
The defendant's first appellate contention raised in this appeal concerns the trial justice's denial of his second motion to suppress. In that motion, he had alleged that the blood taken from him at the hospital and upon which the test results originated had been taken in violation of § 31-27-2 and were thus inadmissible at his trial. In advancing that contention, he obviously overlooks the clear pronouncement made by this Court in its May 16, 1996 order , in which we concluded that the blood taken from him at the hospital had not been taken in violation of § 31-27-2 and would be admissible if offered at his trial. That order by this Court, we believe, effectively precluded any justice of the Superior Court from again revisiting the question of the admissibility of that blood test result evidence and also precluded the defendant from relitigating a fact issue upon which this Court had previously and conclusively ruled.
At first blush, it would appear convenient to refer to the issue preclusion effect of our May 16, 1996 order by ordinary application of the law-of-the-case doctrine, but we believe that because of the particular fact situation present in this case, that doctrine would not be truly applicable here. We are not reviewing in this appeal a case wherein we are concerned with a ruling made by one judge of a coordinate jurisdiction who has been called upon to revisit and reconsider an issue that had been previously determined by another judge in the same court. Instead, we are reviewing here a case wherein this Court, by constitutional mandate the final arbiter of litigated matters, has made a prior ruling on the admissibility of certain evidence which the defendant later sought, in a second motion, to have reexamined and redetermined by a Superior Court trial justice. In this particular factual context, we believe that our May 16, 1996 order finally and conclusively determined that the defendant's blood had not been taken and tested in violation of § 31-27-2 and would be admissible at his trial. That order effectively invoked the principles of res judicata to the question of the admissibility of the defendant's blood test results. Our order, we believe, precluded a Superior Court justice from thereafter revisiting and redetermining the admissibility of the blood test results upon which we had previously ruled. That issue preclusion, which is the essence of res judicata, we believe, applies here.
Our colleague, in relying upon Richardson v. Smith, 691 A.2d 543, 546 (R.I.1997) in his concurring opinion, believes, however, that we should review the defendant's denial of his suppression motion issue by employing the law-of-the-case doctrine rather than by invoking the doctrine of res judicata. We point out first that in Richardson, we were concerned with a fact situation entirely different from that which is now before us. In Richardson we said that "after one judge has decided an interlocutory matter in a pending suit, a second judge on that same court, when confronted at a later stage of the suit with the same question in the identical manner, should refrain from disturbing the first ruling." Richardson, 691 A.2d at 546. That is and remains sound law.
In this particular case, however, we do not have a factual-legal issue being evaluated between two Superior Court justices, but instead an issue upon which this Supreme Court had previously ruled being resubmitted again to a Superior Court trial justice. We believe that our May 16, 1996 order was a final determination of the issue and that to utilize the law-of-the-case doctrine on the case facts before us would only...
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