State v. Huse
| Decision Date | 06 March 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. 07-12-00383-CR,07-12-00383-CR |
| Parties | STATE OF TEXAS, APPELLANT v. HAYDEN HUSE, APPELLEE |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
On Appeal from the County Court of Law No. 1
Lubbock County, Texas
Trial Court No. 2011-467345; Honorable Mark Hocker, Presiding
Before QUINN, C.J., and CAMPBELL and PIRTLE, JJ.
Appellant, State of Texas, appeals the trial court's order suppressing medical records of Appellee, Hayden Huse, in a misdemeanor, driving while intoxicated case.1 In support of its position that the trial court erred in suppressing those records, the State asserts: (1) Appellee lacked standing to challenge the grand jury subpoena by which the State obtained those records; (2) the trial court erroneously concluded the Stateunlawfully obtained Appellee's medical record because the State did comply with federal requirements under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA);2 (3) the trial court erroneously concluded Appellee's medical records should be suppressed under article 38.23 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure because those records were legally obtained; and (4) the trial court erroneously concluded Appellee's blood-alcohol test results were scientifically unreliable or irrelevant. We reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
BACKGROUND
On February 13, 2010, at approximately 2:00 a.m., Appellee failed to make a turn and drove his car into a dirt embankment before coming to stop in a cotton field. Lubbock County Sheriff deputies responded to the accident, and Appellee was transported to a hospital due to injuries he sustained in the accident. When Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Troy McKee arrived to investigate, the deputies told him Appellee's breath smelled of an alcoholic beverage.
At approximately 5:15 a.m., Trooper McKee arrived at the hospital. He also noticed Appellee smelled of an alcoholic beverage and that his eyes were red, bloodshot, and watery. Trooper McKee was unable to administer any field sobriety tests due to Appellee's injuries. During their conversation, Appellee admitted that, prior to the accident, he drank six to seven beers between 7:30 and 11:30 p.m. at severallocal bars. Appellee also indicated his last drink was at 11:30 p.m. and he had nothing to drink since the accident. Based on this information coupled with Appellee's failure to negotiate the curve resulting in the accident, Trooper McKee believed Appellee was intoxicated when the accident occurred. He did not request a mandatory blood draw and Appellee refused to give a breath or blood specimen. Hospital personnel had, however, drawn Appellee's blood for medical purposes at approximately 4:50 a.m.—two hours and fifty minutes after the accident.3
Based upon Trooper McKee's offense report, on March 30, 2010, a Lubbock Assistant County Criminal District Attorney filed an application for a subpoena seeking Appellee's medical records related to his injuries from the accident. At that time, no grand jury investigation concerning Appellee was pending. The next day, Appellee was charged by Complaint and Information in Cause No. 2010-460,173, with driving while intoxicated. Ultimately, Appellee's medical records were obtained as a result of the March 30 subpoena when, on April 15, 2010, a hospital business records affidavit, with Appellee's medical records attached, was delivered to the Criminal District Attorney's Office.
On December 15, 2010, Appellee filed a generic motion to suppress, seeking suppression of any evidence obtained as the result of "illegal acts on behalf of the State" committed on February 13, 2010, the date of the accident. That motion was subsequently amended on March 14, 2011, to specifically seek suppression of blood evidence "illegally" taken in violation of Appellee's rights under HIPPA, through the useof a "sham" grand jury subpoena. Before an order disposing of that motion was entered, the prosecution of Cause No. 2010-460,173 was dismissed on September 27, 2011, on the State's motion.
Eight days later, on October 5, 2011, a second application for a subpoena was filed, again seeking production of Appellee's medical records related to his injuries resulting from the accident. This time the application was signed by the foreman of the grand jury. That same day, the District Clerk issued a new "Grand Jury Subpoena." The next day, Appellee was again charged with driving while intoxicated—this time in Cause No. 2011-467,345—arising out of the same events of February 13, 2010. Shortly thereafter, on October 11, 2011, the hospital's business records affidavit and Appellee's medical records were again delivered to the Criminal District Attorney's Office.4
On January 25, 2012, a suppression hearing was held addressing the issues originally raised in the amended motion to suppress filed in Cause No. 2010-460,173. In addition to testimony of Trooper McKee, the facts surrounding the subpoena process and the obtaining of medical records were stipulated to between the State and Appellee, leaving only the issue of whether Appellee's medical records were illegally obtained and, therefore, excludable.
On August 6, 2012, the trial court granted Appellee's amended motion to suppress and on November 30, 2012, it filed its Trial Court's Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. In those Findings the trial court found, in pertinent part, that: (1)Appellee had standing to challenge the grand jury process by which the State obtained his medical records; (2) HIPAA creates an expectation of privacy in a person's medical information; (3) the first grand jury subpoena was defective; (4) medical records obtained pursuant to the first grand jury subpoena violated HIPAA; (5) the second grand jury subpoena did not cure the first subpoena's HIPAA violation;5 (6) the State failed to demonstrate any attenuation of the taint arising from the first grand jury subpoena, (7) the State did not acquire Appellee's medical records via a warrant; (8) article 38.23 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure applies because the State violated state and federal law through the use of the first subpoena; (9) the grand jury subpoenas used to obtain Appellee's HIPPA protected medical records were unlawful, (10) the doctrine of inevitable discovery is not available under Texas law; and (11) there is no scientifically reliable way to relate Appellee's medically tested serum blood-alcohol level back to a whole blood-alcohol level at the time of driving. This appeal followed.
DISCUSSION
STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review a trial court's ruling on a motion to suppress evidence under a bifurcated standard of review. Ford v. State, 158 S.W.3d 488, 493 (Tex. 2005). We do not engage in our own factual review, Romero v. State, 800 S.W.2d 539, 543 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990), but give almost total deference to the trial court's rulings on questions of historical fact and application-of-law-to-fact questions that turn on an evaluation of credibility and demeanor. Montanez v. State, 195 S.W.3d 101, 108-09 (Tex. Crim. App.2006). When the trial court makes explicit fact findings, we determine whether the evidence, when viewed in the light most favorable to the trial court's ruling, supports those fact findings. State v. Kelly, 204 S.W.3d 808, 818-19 (Tex. Crim. App. 2006). When the trial court's rulings are reasonably supported by the record and are correct under "any theory applicable to the case," an appellate court should affirm. State v. White, 306 S.W.3d 753, 757, n.10 (Tex. Crim. App. 2010). See also Calloway v. State, 743 S.W.2d 645, 651-52 (Tex. Crim. App. 1988) (). Accordingly, if the trial court's findings are supported by the record, we must affirm the decision if it is supported by our de novo review of the theories of law "applicable to the case." Kelly, 204 S.W.3d at 819.
MOTION TO SUPPRESS
A motion to suppress is a specialized objection regarding the admissibility of evidence. Hall v. State, 303 S.W.3d 336, 342 n.9 (Tex. App.—Amarillo 2009, pet. ref'd). See Galitz v. State, 617 S.W.2d 949, 952 n.10 (Tex. Crim. App. 1981) (op. on reh'g). Such a motion is the proper remedy when evidence is illegally obtained in violation of a defendant's constitutional or statutory rights. Hall, 303 S.W.3d at 342 n.9 (). See Reyes v. State, 361 S.W.3d 222, 230 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2012, pet. ref'd).6 Only those acts which violate a person's privacy rights or property interests are subject to the state or federal exclusionary rule. Miles v. State, 241 S.W.3d 28, 36 n.33 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007). See,e.g., Chavez v. State, 9 S.W.3d 817, 822 (Tex. Crim. App. 2000) (Price, J., concurring) ().
The mere filing of a motion to suppress does not impose on the State the initial burden of showing compliance with the law. Wilkerson v. State, 173 S.W.3d 521, 532 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005). It is "settled law that the burden of proof is initially on the defendant to raise the exclusionary rule issue by producing evidence of a statutory violation, and that this burden then shifts to the State to prove compliance." Pham v. State, 175 S.W.3d 767, 772, 773 (Tex. Crim. App. 2005) (). Before evidence is rendered inadmissible, the defendant must also show a causal connection between the violation and the evidence obtained. Id. at 773. If there is no causal relationship between the illegal conduct and the acquisition of the evidence, the evidence is not obtained in violation of the law. Bell v. State, 169 S.W.3d 384, 391 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2005,...
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