State v. Honeyman
| Decision Date | 30 April 1990 |
| Docket Number | No. 89,89 |
| Citation | 560 So.2d 825 |
| Parties | STATE of Louisiana v. Robert M. HONEYMAN. K 1942. 560 So.2d 825 |
| Court | Louisiana Supreme Court |
William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., Paul Carmouche, Dist. Atty., Catherine Estopinal, Asst. Dist. Atty., for applicant.
W. Eugene Golden, Hall & Golden, Shreveport, for respondent.
Robert M. Honeyman was charged by bill of information with vehicular homicide in violation of La.R.S. 14:32.1. He filed a motion to suppress the results of a blood alcohol test performed on a blood sample drawn from him after his arrest. After a hearing, the trial judge denied the motion. After a jury trial, defendant was found guilty as charged. Subsequently, he was sentenced to serve two years in prison at hard labor. He appealed his conviction and sentence to the court of appeal raising thirty-six assignments of error. The court of appeal, finding that the results of the blood alcohol test were wrongfully introduced into evidence (Assignment of Error No. 1), reversed defendant's conviction and sentence and remanded the case to the district court for a new trial. The court of appeal did not address the remaining assignments of error. 1 On the state's application, we granted certiorari to review the correctness of that decision. 2
On October 20, 1985, defendant was involved in an automobile accident which resulted in the death of a passenger in defendant's car. The court of appeal described the accident as follows:
This one vehicle accident occurred during the early morning hours.... The defendant was driving a 1975 Cadillac with two guest passengers when the car struck the right girder of the Old Blanchard Road bridge in Caddo Parish. The impact caused the collapse of a span of the bridge. The car landed on its roof and came to rest approximately 100 feet from the initial point of impact. The front seat passenger, Reginald Stanley, died from cardio-respiratory failure when his neck was hyperflexed forward, dislocating his spine and lacerating or severing his spinal cord.
Defendant was injured in the accident and taken to a hospital. Less than three hours after the accident, a sample of defendant's blood was drawn at the hospital by a blood technician. The day after the accident, the blood technician gave defendant's blood sample to a chemist. The next day, the chemist performed blood analysis on the sample using a gas chromatograph. The analysis showed defendant's blood alcohol level to be 0.16%, which is above the level that is a condition of vehicular homicide under La.R.S. 14:32.1 A(2). 3
The blood technician who drew the blood worked for the North Louisiana Criminalistics Laboratory (crime lab). He was trained and certified to draw blood by labs at the Veterans Administration Hospital and the Schumpert Medical Center. While working for the crime lab, he drew blood from at least 1700 people. The kit he used to draw defendant's blood was a B-D Blood Alcohol Kit Number 4990. This kit contains a preservative which inhibits any ethanol (alcohol) production in the tubes used to store defendant's blood.
The chemist who performed the blood analysis, Rebecca Collins, also was employed by the crime lab. She had a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology with a Minor in Chemistry. She was trained to use the gas chromatograph by her supervisor and a blood alcohol analyst. Additionally, she was required to read a training manual compiled by her supervisor. On March 29, 1985, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety certified her as a blood alcohol analyst. The certification was valid for five years. Prior to analyzing defendant's blood sample, she had analyzed hundreds of samples for blood alcohol determination. She participated in monthly proficiency testing, in which the crime lab analysts would test samples containing known blood alcohol content sent from the University of Tennessee Toxicology Lab. She also participated in proficiency tests on samples exchanged with crime labs in Monroe and Alexandria. The crime lab was accredited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.
The chemist described the gas chromatograph and how she runs it. 4 She routinely inspects and maintains it. She always follows the crime lab's standard procedures for running it. Before testing evidence samples such as defendant's, she calibrates and tests the gas chromatograph by injecting reference samples of known blood alcohol content certified by the manufacturer. First, she injects a sample containing an alcohol content of 0.40% and the machine is told that this is a 0.40% blood alcohol sample. She reinjects the 0.40% sample to make sure that she will get the correct reading. Next, she injects a 0.0% sample (water) to insure that there is no contamination from the internal standard or carryover from the 0.40% sample. She then injects a 0.10% sample because that is a significant level in criminal cases. As a final step in the calibration procedure, she injects a blood control sample which has 0.15% blood alcohol. The calibration procedure spot checks the chemicals used in the calibration because the results of the different reference samples confirm each other. She must get the correct answer for each of the samples. After the calibration is complete, she is ready to test evidence samples such as defendant's to determine their blood alcohol level. The evidence samples are tested in batch lots usually once or twice weekly. After half of a batch is analyzed, the 0.15% blood control sample is reanalyzed. After the rest of the batch is analyzed, the 0.15% blood control sample is again reanalyzed to make sure that nothing has gone wrong during the analysis of the blood samples. Each evidence sample is analyzed in duplicate. The readings on the duplicate samples must be within 0.005% of each other. The chemist ran duplicate samples of defendant's blood and obtained results of 0.164% and 0.165%. She took the lower figure, 0.164%, and rounded down to 0.16%. She stated that she was certain that the result of 0.16% was correct. Both the chemist and her supervisor testified that they would definitely be aware of any malfunction in the gas chromatograph. The supervisor said,
The chemist's supervisor, Jimmy Barnhill, was qualified as an expert in blood analysis and the effects of alcohol on driving. During his testimony, he used the Widmark Formula to calculate the amount of alcohol in defendant's body when the sample was drawn based upon defendant's weight (180 pounds), sex, and blood alcohol level. According to the calculation, defendant had 3.9 ounces of pure alcohol in his body when the sample was drawn. That corresponds to the amount of pure alcohol in about 8.1 twelve-ounce cans of beer. Mr. Barnhill also calculated that at the time of the accident, defendant's blood alcohol level probably was between 0.186% and 0.20%. He then testified about the effects of a blood alcohol level of 0.16%:
At a level of .16 a person would be noticeably intoxicated.... [T]hey would be able to walk possibly, they might be able to talk and to some extent carry on a conversation. But I think a sober person would be ... able to know that that person was intoxicated, had been drinking alcohol. At ... this level a person's vision would be impaired. There [are] two types of vision that we depend on when we are driving. One of them is our peripheral vision....
When you are driving down the road you depend on that vision extensively. You make decisions, albeit unconscious in some cases, based on your ability to use your peripheral vision.... When your blood alcohol level is elevated your peripheral vision is greatly impaired and the higher it gets the more impaired it gets. It would be like wearing blinders so that you could not have the benefit of being able to see things out to the side.
Of course your ability at night to recover from a dazzling light is greatly diminished as your blood alcohol level increases. At very high levels double vision sets in where you actually see two objects when you are looking at something.... The ability to make judgments is impaired. Judgments about how fast you are going, judgments about how far it is from this point to that point, when do I need to put my brakes on....
All judgment is impaired. Your ability to get your foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal, that time is increased, the reaction time is increased. All of these things that you need to drive safely are greatly impaired at the level of .16.
The court of appeal relied on State v. Rowell, 517 So.2d 799 (La.1988), to find that the results of the blood alcohol test should not have been admitted into evidence. In Rowell, we found that the results of a blood alcohol test using a gas chromatograph were inadmissible against a defendant charged with operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol in violation of La.R.S. 14:98. We stated in Rowell, 517 So.2d at 800:
In order for the state to avail itself of the statutory presumption of a defendant's intoxication arising from a chemical analysis of his blood under La.R.S. 32:662, it must show that the state has promulgated detailed procedures which will insure the integrity and reliability of the chemical test, including provisions for repair, maintenance, inspection, cleaning, certification, and chemical accuracy. It must also show that the state has strictly complied with the promulgated procedures.
In Rowell, we decided that the state had failed to meet its burden of proving that the regulations insured the integrity and reliability of the blood alcohol test. 5 Subsequent to the court of appeal's decision, we stated in State v. McElroy, 553 So.2d 456, 458 n. 1 (La.1989), that "Rowell is not pertinent when the state does not rely on the statutory...
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