State v. Forsyth

• Decision Date: 03 May 2002
• Citation: 2002 ME 75,795 A.2d 66
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Gerald A. FORSYTH.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

795 A.2d 66

2002 ME 75

STATE of Maine v. Gerald A. FORSYTH.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: April 3, 2002.

Decided: May 3, 2002.

G. Steven Rowe, Attorney General, Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Attorney General (orally), Augusta, for State. Wayne R. Foote, Esq. (orally), Foote & Temple, Bangor, for defendant.

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and CLIFFORD, RUDMAN, DANA, ALEXANDER, CALKINS and LEVY, JJ.

CLIFFORD, J.

[¶ 1] Pursuant to 15 M.R.S.A. § 2115-A(1) (Supp.2001),¹ the State appeals from an order of the District Court (Skowhegan, Clapp, J.), suppressing evidence of the results of the blood-alcohol level test given to the defendant, Gerald A. Forsyth.² We agree with the State's contention that the evidence was more than sufficient to establish that there was probable cause to believe that Forsyth was under the influence of intoxicants and for the administration of a blood-alcohol test, and that the District Court erred in concluding otherwise. Accordingly, we vacate that part of the District Court's order suppressing the results of the blood-alcohol test.

[¶ 2] The District Court made the following undisputed findings, which are well supported by the record:

At about 8:30 p.m. on [June] 30, 2000, Gerald Forsyth drove into the United States border checkpoint north of Jackman, Maine as if arriving from Canada. He pulled into the wrong side of the checkpoint and was advised by Federal INS officer [Roy] Williams that he must back up and drive his vehicle into the checkpoint on the other (southbound) side. Instead, he backed his car up [into] an annex parking lot and shut off the vehicle's lights. He remained there for [a] while and eventually put the lights back on and, once again, drove it into the wrong entry side. He was again instructed to back up and enter on the appropriate side. He then did this. The greeting Customs Officer, [Lori] Poulin, noticed a smell of alcohol on Mr. Forsyth's breath and observed him to be disorientated. Mr. Forsyth appeared to not know that he had been in Canada. He advised the officer that he had been drinking from a pint sized bottle of whiskey which he said he had purchased earlier in the day in New Hampshire. The officer had Mr. Forsyth exit the vehicle and the car was searched. The officer confiscated that partly empty whiskey bottle and several firearms, one loaded.... [This] information was relayed to Officer Darryl Peary of the Maine State Police who Officer Williams called to report suspected OUI and firearm violations. This call was made [at] about 9:00 P.M. and Officer Peary, then on patrol many miles away, arrived at the checkpoint approximately two hours later. In the interim, the federal officers, both armed and in uniform, detained Mr. Forsyth in their presence in the lobby of this remote checkpoint.... Mr. Forsyth was still dutifully sitting where he had been instructed to sit in the lobby when Officer Peary arrived shortly before 11:00 P.M. Officer Peary initially conferred with Officer Williams and learned the details of the officers' observations and accepted possession of the items confiscated by them .... Officer Peary then approached Mr. Forsyth with the intention to investigate the OUI and firearms violations referred to him [by] the federal officers.

Initial investigatory questioning of Mr. Forsyth informed Officer Peary that the Defendant had been traveling that day from Connecticut to a friend's home in Solon, Maine. The officer observed that Mr. Forsyth appeared disoriented and did not know how he came to be at the border checkpoint. He informed the officer that he had relatives in Calais, Maine. He smelled of alcohol consumption and had red and glassy eyes. He confirmed to the officer that he had purchased the whiskey in New Hampshire just before entering Maine at 1:00 or 1:30 P.M. and had immediately begun consuming its contents as he traveled north. The Officer then told Mr. Forsyth to rate his state of sobriety on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being entirely sober and 10 being totally drunk. Mr. Forsyth replied "3 or 4."

[¶ 3] Officer Peary then took Forsyth into the office off of the lobby and conducted six field sobriety tests. Officer Peary first performed an Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) examination, which consisted of some verbal components in that Forsyth was required to respond to certain preliminary questions concerning whether Forsyth had any neurological or medical conditions. Officer Peary observed five intoxication clues of the HGN procedure, which indicated to him that Forsyth was impaired, potentially due to the influence of alcohol. The officer then asked Forsyth to recite the alphabet from E to L, but Forsyth failed the requested recitation on three attempts.

[¶ 4] Officer Peary then asked Forsyth to count backwards from sixty-seven to fifty-eight. Forsyth failed to stop at fifty-eight and continued onto forty-nine in his attempt to repeat the requested recitation. Forsyth failed a finger dexterity test, which included a verbal component of him counting from one to four and then from four to one in succession. Forsyth attempted a walk and turn test with a verbal counting component that is intended to examine a person's balance and ability to follow instructions. Forsyth improperly turned in the middle of the test and stepped over one-half of an inch out of line on one step, and stepped completely out of line on another step. Forsyth was unable to properly complete the one-leg stand test, which involved standing on one leg and counting by seconds until told to stop.

[¶ 5] Based on the information he received from the INS officers, in part on the field sobriety tests, and on his own personal observations of Forsyth, Officer Williams concluded that Forsyth had probably been operating under the influence at 9:00 P.M. and administered an implied consent blood-alcohol level test at about 11:10 P.M. Forsyth was also questioned about the loaded gun. Forsyth was never given a "Miranda" warning.

[¶ 6] After being charged with operating under the influence of intoxicants in violation of 29-A M.R.S.A. § 2411 (1996) (Class D)³ and with possessing a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle in violation of 12 M.R.S.A. § 7406(9-A)(B) (Class E),⁴ Forsyth filed a motion to suppress, arguing that all the oral statements made by him to Officer Peary, including the verbal components of the field sobriety tests should be excluded because those comments were made in response to custodial interrogation without a Miranda warning. At the suppression hearing, Forsyth amended his motion to suppress to include a "fruit of the poisonous tree" claim grounded in Dickerson v. United States, 530 U.S. 428, 438-43, 120 S.Ct. 2326, 147 L.Ed.2d 405 (2000), in which the United States Supreme Court concluded that the exclusionary rule may apply to Miranda violations in some cases. With this latter argument, Forsyth sought to suppress as "poisonous fruit" all the field sobriety test results, all the observations made by Officer Peary during those tests, as well as the results of the blood-alcohol level test that was administered to Forsyth.

[¶ 7] The District Court granted the motion in part. The court suppressed all of Forsyth's oral statements made in response to Officer Peary's questioning, except for his answers to routine booking questions, and suppressed the verbal components of the field sobriety tests because it concluded that Forsyth was in custody at the time of the questioning and was not properly informed of his Miranda rights prior to making the statements. The court also suppressed the blood-alcohol level test results, reasoning that without Forsyth's responses to Officer Peary's questioning and without the verbal components of the field sobriety test there was insufficient probable cause to administer the test. The court relied on Officer Peary's subjective belief that there was insufficient probable cause to administer the test without Forsyth's responses and the verbal components of the field sobriety tests.

[¶ 8] The State appeals only from the District Court's decision to suppress the blood-alcohol level test, and contends that that part of the order to suppress should be vacated because the District Court erred in concluding that there was no probable cause for administering the test.⁵

[¶ 9] We review rulings on motions to suppress for errors of law or clearly erroneous findings of fact. State v. Anderson, 1999 ME 18, ¶ 6, 724 A.2d 1231, 1233. "A ruling on a motion to suppress evidence based on uncontroverted facts involves a legal conclusion that we review independently on appeal." State v. Stade, 683 A.2d 164, 165 (Me.1996). Neither party disputes the factual findings made by the District Court, but the State challenges the District Court's legal conclusions drawn from those facts. We review those conclusions de novo. See id.

[¶ 10] Submission to an implied consent blood-alcohol level test is mandatory if an officer has probable cause to believe that a person has committed an OUI violation. 29-A M.R.S.A. § 2521(1) (1996 & Supp.2001).

Probable cause to arrest [or search] exists whenever facts and circumstances within the knowledge of the police and of which there was reasonably trustworthy information would warrant a prudent and cautious person to believe that the arrestee had committed the crime. The information determining the existence of probable cause is not limited to what [one officer] knew of his own personal knowledge, but includes all the information known to the police.

State v. Candage, 549 A.2d 355, 360 (Me.1988) (citation omitted); see also State v. Carr, 1997 ME 221, ¶ 7, 704 A.2d 353, 356 ("probable cause is evaluated from the collective information known to the police rather than the personal knowledge of the arresting officer"). The determination of the existence of probable cause "is based on an objective standard, not on whether the particular officer believed he had probable cause." State v. Foy, 662 A.2d 238, 240 (Me.1995);...