Schmidt v. Dir. of Revenue
| Decision Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. ED 108175,ED 108175 |
| Citation | 611 S.W.3d 542 |
| Parties | Robin L. SCHMIDT, Respondent, v. DIRECTOR OF REVENUE, Appellant. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
FOR APPELLANT: Eric W. McDonnell, Eric Schmitt, P.O. Box 899, Jefferson City, Missouri 65102.
FOR RESPONDENTS: Carl M. Ward, 305 West 4th Street, Washington, Missouri 63090, Denise L. Childress, 100 Chesterfield Parkway, Ste. 200, Chesterfield, Missouri 63005.
The Director of Revenue appeals the trial court's amended judgment issued on July 31, 2019 ordering the Director to remove the license revocation from Respondent Schmidt's driving record and reinstate her driving privileges because the court found to be invalid the search warrant used to obtain Schmidt's blood samples on the basis that the warrant application contained inaccuracies and was insufficient to support a probable cause finding, and additionally, that the warrant application was improperly altered by the arresting officer and prosecuting attorney after the warrant had already been issued by the warrant court. We reverse because we find that the warrant court had a substantial basis to find that probable cause existed to support the issuance of the warrant and neither the warrant application's inaccuracies nor the post-issuance alteration rendered the warrant invalid.
On the evening of July 2, 2017 at around 11:15 p.m., Schmidt was driving her vehicle eastbound on Route 370 in St. Charles County, Missouri when she was stopped by Weldon Spring, Missouri police officer Brodie Waaso for two traffic offenses: failure to drive in a single lane and failure to maintain her speed. After Officer Waaso approached the vehicle and made contact with Schmidt through the driver's side window, he asked for her driver's license and noticed that her speech was slurred and her eyes were bloodshot and watery. Schmidt admitted that she had been drinking earlier that night, but that she felt able to drive because she stopped drinking around 10:00 p.m. Officer Waaso requested that Schmidt exit her vehicle and walk toward his patrol car, which she did without difficulty.
Once Schmidt was seated inside the patrol car, Officer Waaso smelled a strong odor of alcohol from her breath prompting him to request that Schmidt submit to field sobriety tests. Although Schmidt was initially hesitant to perform any tests claiming that she had on-going health issues which would prevent her from passing them and alternatively that she was too scared to undergo any tests because she had been drinking earlier that night, she ultimately agreed. In the first test conducted by Officer Waaso, Schmidt was asked to recite the alphabet without singing it, which she did correctly. During the second test, wherein Schmidt was asked to count backwards from the number 81 to 67, Schmidt counted backwards from 81 to 58 before realizing she was supposed to stop at 67. The third and final test that Schmidt performed, although she did not complete, was the horizontal gaze nystagmus
(HGN) test which required Schmidt to track the tip of Officer Waaso's finger with her eyes while he looked for six potential clues of intoxication. Officer Waaso successfully verified the presence of the first clue, but could not continue to administer the test any further due to Schmidt's unwillingness or her alleged inability to properly follow his instructions. Afterwards, Officer Waaso asked Schmidt to submit to a preliminary breath test which she refused stating
Officer Waaso arrested Schmidt for driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated. He then read to her Missouri's implied consent statutory notice which provides that by driving on Missouri's public roads that night, Schmidt consented to take a chemical test to detect the presence of alcohol in her body, and in the event she refused, her license was subject to being revoked for one year. Nevertheless, Schmidt refused Officer Waaso's request that she perform a chemical breath test so Officer Waaso drove Schmidt to the St. Charles County Department of Corrections and submitted to the court a search warrant application to draw Schmidt's blood in order to determine whether Schmidt was driving while intoxicated. The court found probable cause to issue the warrant and authorized its execution.
Sometime between when the warrant was issued at 1:29 a.m. and when Schmidt was transported to the hospital at 1:45 a.m., Officer Waaso noticed that while Schmidt's name and identifying information appeared correctly throughout the warrant application, on one occasion a former arrestee's name appeared instead of Schmidt on the application. On the warrant itself, Schmidt's name and identifying information was correct.
So Officer Waaso contacted the prosecuting attorney who advised that he should cross out the wrong name on the application and write in "Schmidt" which he did. This was done without the knowledge or approval of the warrant judge. No changes were made to the warrant itself. Officer Waaso then delivered the warrant to the staff nurse at the hospital who withdrew two blood samples from Schmidt, each thirty minutes apart. The samples showed Schmidt's blood alcohol content to be .132 percent and .123 percent, both amounts in excess of the legal limit.
The Director ordered Schmidt's license revoked pursuant to § 302.505. Schmidt then filed a petition in the St. Charles County Circuit Court for a trial de novo challenging the revocation of her license. At the January 24, 2019 trial, Schmidt objected to the admission of her blood test results. She claimed that the warrant application was invalid because it did not contain certain required information including the time the warrant application was made; that the application contained incorrect information including a surname and pronoun different than Schmidt's; and it fallaciously stated that she performed poorly on multiple tests and refused others. Schmidt also asserted that the conduct of the investigating officer and the prosecuting attorney in altering the warrant application without the issuing court's knowledge or approval was improper and invalidated the warrant.
On April 16, 2019, the court issued its judgment sustaining the revocation of Schmidt's license upon a finding that the warrant was presumed valid despite the claimed defects on the warrant application.
Schmidt moved for a new trial or amended judgment arguing again that the warrant application contained incorrect and misleading information. After reviewing Schmidt's motion, the court reversed itself and issued its amended judgment on July 31, 2019 ordering the Director to remove the revocation from Schmidt's driving record and reinstate her driving privileges. The court found that it was the Director's, not Schmidt's, burden to prove the warrant's validity and because the Director failed to show that the warrant application, altered after the warrant's issuance and allegedly containing materially misleading information, was sufficient to support a probable cause finding, Schmidt's blood test results—which undoubtedly proved that Schmidt's blood alcohol content was over the legal limit at the time of her arrest—must be excluded from evidence. The Director's appeal follows.
Appellate courts review the trial court's judgment in a license suspension or revocation case like any other court-tried civil case. Stiers v. Dir. of Revenue , 477 S.W.3d 611, 614 (Mo. banc 2016). The trial court's judgment will be affirmed unless there is no substantial evidence to support it, it is against the weight of the evidence, or it erroneously declares or applies the law. Id. ; see also Murphy v. Carron , 536 S.W.2d 30, 32 (Mo. banc 1976). When evidence is contested by disputing a fact in any manner, an appellate court defers to the trial court's determination of credibility. Johnson v. Dir. of Revenue, State , 411 S.W.3d 878, 881 (Mo. App. S.D. 2013). "A trial court is free to disbelieve any, all, or none of that evidence." Id. (). When facts are not contested and the issue is one of law, our review is de novo, and no deference is given to the trial court's determination. Johnson , 411 S.W.3d at 881.
In its first point on appeal, the Director claims that the law in effect at the time Schmidt's blood test was administered did not require a search warrant to obtain Schmidt's blood test results and thus the trial court had no legal justification for excluding the results on the basis of an invalid warrant. The Director's argument is based on its assertion that at the time Schmidt's blood sample was drawn, § 577.029, the Missouri statute governing the procedure for chemical tests in license suspension and revocation proceedings, did not require a warrant.
For her part, Schmidt does not dispute that § 577.029 applies, but she argues that the version of § 577.029 in effect at the time of trial should apply because that version explicitly requires either "the consent of the patient" or "a warrant issued by a court of competent jurisdiction" in order to obtain blood for the purpose of determining blood alcohol content.1 While we agree with the Director that the controlling law in this case is the version of § 577.029 in effect at the time of Schmidt's blood draw, Stiers , 477 S.W.3d at 618-192 , we nevertheless reject the Director's argument because we find that a warrant was still required pursuant to federal and state constitutional guarantees of freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S....
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