McCoy v. State
| Decision Date | 10 February 2023 |
| Docket Number | CR-20-0821 |
| Parties | Broderick Darnell McCoy v. State of Alabama |
| Court | Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals |
Appeal from Russell Circuit Court (CC-15-614.60)
On Return to Remand
In December 2018, Broderick Darnell McCoy was convicted of first-degree assault, a violation of § 13A-6-20, Ala Code 1975, and was sentenced, as a habitual felony offender to 99 years' imprisonment. On March 6, 2020, this Court affirmed McCoy's conviction and sentence in an unpublished memorandum, see McCoy v. State (No CR-18-0559), 322 So.3d 1074 (Ala.Crim.App.2020) (table), and the certificate of judgment issued on September 11, 2020 following the Alabama Supreme Court's denial of certiorari review. In March 2021, McCoy filed a petition for postconviction relief pursuant to Rule 32, Ala. R. Crim. P. The Russell Circuit Court denied that petition, and McCoy has appealed the circuit court's judgment.
While driving in Phenix City on February 16, 2013, McCoy struck a pedestrian with his vehicle, causing significant injuries to the pedestrian. At the scene of the accident, Sgt. Anthony Roberts of the Phenix City Police Department spoke with McCoy, who initially claimed that he did not need medical treatment. However, when Sgt. Roberts found an open can of beer in McCoy's vehicle, McCoy asked to be taken to a hospital for medical treatment. As McCoy was being loaded into an ambulance, Sgt. Roberts asked him to consent to a blood test, but McCoy refused.
Once he was in the ambulance, McCoy provided the attending paramedic with only "minor complaints" (Record on Direct Appeal ("RDA"), R. 21), and he admitted to the paramedic that he had asked to be taken to a hospital because "he was afraid that he was going to go [to] jail" (RDA, R. 36), not because he needed medical treatment. Although McCoy admitted that he did not need or desire medical treatment, he consented to the paramedic's request for blood samples to be used "for medical treatment purposes." (RDA, R. 23.) However, when McCoy arrived at the hospital, he became "disruptive" (RDA, R. 42) and, according to the circuit court, refused medical treatment and left the hospital. The vials of McCoy's blood that had been drawn in the ambulance were then discarded into a locked hazardous-waste container without any tests having been conducted on the blood.
A little more than two hours after McCoy left the hospital, Sgt. Roberts went to the hospital and asked a nurse if McCoy's blood had been drawn, and the nurse informed him that the vials containing McCoy's blood had been discarded into the hazardous-waste container. The nurse then showed Sgt. Roberts where the hazardous-waste container was located, and, without obtaining a warrant, Sgt. Roberts "broke open the container" (RDA, R. 132), retrieved the vials of McCoy's blood, and submitted the blood to the Department of Forensic Sciences, which tested the blood to determine McCoy's blood-alcohol content ("BAC"). That test revealed that McCoy's BAC was 0.29 percent, which is more than three times the legal limit for the driver of a vehicle. See § 32-5A-191(a)(1), Ala. Code 1975. McCoy was subsequently arrested and charged with first-degree assault pursuant to § 13A-6-20(a)(5), which provides, in pertinent part, that a person commits first-degree assault if, "[w]hile driving under the influence of alcohol … in violation of Section 32-5A-191 …, he or she causes serious physical injury to the person of another with a vehicle or vessel."
Before trial, McCoy's counsel moved to suppress the BAC test results, arguing (1) that the State could not establish a proper chain of custody for McCoy's blood; (2) that, because McCoy had not been arrested before the BAC test was conducted, Alabama's implied-consent statute did not operate to provide his consent to the BAC test, see § 32-5-192, Ala. Code 1975; and (3) that the blood "was not contained in conformance with the required and accepted standards enumerated in [§ 32-5A-194(a)(2), Ala. Code 1975]" (RDA, C. 55), which, at the time of McCoy's offense, provided that "only a physician or a registered nurse (or other qualified person) may withdraw blood for the purpose of determining the alcoholic content therein." The trial court denied that motion, and McCoy was subsequently convicted of first-degree assault.
In March 2021, McCoy filed the instant Rule 32 petition, in which he argued that his counsel had rendered ineffective assistance by failing to assert the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution as a basis for suppressing the BAC test results. In support of that claim, McCoy argued that the State's warrantless seizure and testing of his blood violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable seizures and searches by the State, State v. Harris, 159 So.3d 86, 90 (Ala.Crim.App.2014), and that the BAC test results were "without question … the most compelling evidence against [him] at trial." (C. 12.) Thus, according to McCoy, his counsel rendered "clearly deficient" assistance by failing to raise a Fourth Amendment claim. (C. 15.)
The circuit court summarily dismissed McCoy's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim based on its finding that the admissibility of the BAC test results had been "addressed at a pretrial suppression hearing" and that, as a result, McCoy's counsel had "t[aken] the action which she allegedly failed to take." (C. 22.) McCoy appealed, arguing that, although his counsel had indeed moved to suppress the BAC test results, she had not raised a Fourth Amendment claim in doing so and, thus, contrary to the circuit court's finding, had not "t[aken] the action which she allegedly failed to take." This Court agreed with McCoy, noting that it had refused to consider his Fourth Amendment claim on direct appeal because the claim had not been raised at trial and therefore had not been preserved for appellate review. Thus, on December 7, 2021, this Court remanded the case to the circuit court for that court to consider McCoy's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim.
On February 24, 2022, the circuit court denied McCoy's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim on the basis that it would have denied the motion to suppress the BAC test results even if McCoy's counsel had raised a Fourth Amendment claim. In support of that ruling, the circuit court stated:
(Record on Return to Remand, C. 17.) This Court then allowed the parties to submit supplemental briefs on return to remand.
In Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984), the United States Supreme Court set forth a two-prong test that a defendant must satisfy in order to prevail on an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim: the defendant must show (1) that his "counsel's performance was deficient" and (2) that "the deficient performance prejudiced the defense." To satisfy the first prong of the Strickland test, the defendant "must show that his counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness." Ex parte Lawley, 512 So.2d 1370, 1372 (Ala. 1987).
On appeal, McCoy argues that the circuit court erred by denying his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. In support of that argument, McCoy continues to allege that the State's warrantless seizure and testing of his blood violated the Fourth Amendment and that the BAC test results were "without question … the most compelling evidence against [him] at trial." (McCoy's brief, p. 15.) Thus, according to McCoy, his counsel rendered clearly ineffective assistance by failing to raise a Fourth Amendment claim. Because McCoy's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim is based on his counsel's failure to raise a specific claim at trial, we begin our analysis by looking at the substance of the underlying claim because, if that claim lacks merit, then McCoy's ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim fails. See Lee v. State, 44 So.3d 1145, 1173 (Ala.Crim.App.2009) ("Because the substantive claim underlying the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel has no merit, counsel could not be ineffective for failing to raise this issue.").
To prevail on a claim that the State's warrantless seizure and search of an item violated the Fourth Amendment, the claimant must show that he had "a subjective expectation of privacy" in the item and that this expectation is one "that society accepts as objectively reasonable." California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 39 (1988). See also Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83, 88 (1998) ; Calhoun v. State, 932 So.2d 923, 938 (Ala.Crim.App.2005) ; and United States v. Stokes, 829 F.3d 47, 51 (1st Cir. 2016) (). Thus, the threshold legal question in McCoy's Fourth Amendment claim is whether he had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in the blood that the State...
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