State v. Williams

CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Vermont
Citation246 A.3d 960
Decision Date16 October 2020
Docket NumberNos. 19-022 & 19-023,s. 19-022 & 19-023
Parties STATE of Vermont v. Peter John WILLIAMS State of Vermont v. Peter J. Boissoneault

Heather J. Gray, Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs, Montpelier, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Matthew Valerio, Defender General, and Rebecca Turner, Appellate Defender, Montpelier, for Defendants-Appellants.

PRESENT: Reiber, C.J., Robinson, Eaton, Carroll and Cohen, JJ.

EATON, J.

¶ 1. Defendants Peter Williams and Peter Boissoneault bring this consolidated appeal from the criminal court's denial of motions to exclude evidence filed in their respective driving under the influence, third offense (DUI-3) prosecutions. They argue that the court erred in declining to suppress their evidentiary breath test results as gathered pursuant to a warrantless search in violation of Chapter I, Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution. We conclude the court correctly determined that these tests satisfied the consent exception to Article 11's warrant requirement, and therefore affirm.

¶ 2. The trial court found the following facts based on the record and evidence presented in both cases. In December 2017, Williams was involved in a motor-vehicle accident. An investigating officer arrested him for DUI and brought him to the Swanton Police Department for processing. There, police requested that Williams take an evidentiary breath test to determine his blood-alcohol concentration (BAC). In connection with this request, an officer recited standard language from the DUI Affidavit-Infrared form. That language included the following warnings regarding the potential ramifications of a refusal to take the test: Williams' refusal could be offered into evidence against him at trial; if a court found the request he refused was reasonable, his license would be suspended for at least six months; if he had prior DUI convictions or was involved in an accident resulting in the serious injury or death of another and refused the test, he could be charged with criminal refusal; and if he had been involved with an accident causing such harm to another, the court could issue a search warrant and order him to submit to a blood test. After the officer relayed this information, Williams declined the proffered opportunity to speak to an attorney and agreed to provide a sample of his breath.

¶ 3. In March 2018, Boissoneault was likewise arrested for driving under the influence. He was taken to the Franklin County Sheriff's Department for processing, where a deputy requested an evidentiary sample of his breath. The deputy then read Boissoneault most of the same refusal warnings from the DUI Affidavit-Infrared form that Williams heard several months earlier.1 Unlike Williams, Boissoneault exercised his statutory right to consult with an attorney; following this conversation, he, too, agreed to take the breath test.

¶ 4. Several important factual findings were common to both cases. Williams and Boissoneault were adults with prior experience encountering law enforcement. The trial court's review of body-camera footage in each case supported the conclusion that both defendants "appear[ed] intelligent and understanding of what [was] occurring during their processing." Throughout both encounters, officers spoke calmly and respectfully; indeed, the record was devoid of any suggestion that they coerced defendants to take the tests through intimidation, unduly aggressive language, or physical force. And neither defendant disputes that his arrest was supported by probable cause to believe that he had been driving under the influence.

¶ 5. Following these encounters, Williams was charged with DUI-3 and careless or negligent operation of a vehicle, and Boissoneault was charged with DUI-3 and operating a vehicle under license suspension. Each filed a motion to exclude the results of the evidentiary breath test in his case, arguing that the information provided to him in connection with the request to submit to the test coerced his consent to participate, rendering it involuntary under Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution. They maintained that because no other exception to Article 11's warrant requirement applied, the warrantless searches were unconstitutional and their results must be suppressed.

¶ 6. The trial court found that two exceptions to the Vermont Constitution's warrant requirement applied to the tests, and denied defendants' motions on this basis. It concluded that each defendant voluntarily consented verbally and in writing to the evidentiary breath tests, satisfying the consent exception, and that a warrantless breath test is a constitutionally valid search incident to lawful arrest for DUI. Subsequently, defendants both entered conditional guilty pleas to their DUI-3 charges, preserving the right to appeal the court's denial of their motions to exclude; in exchange, the State dismissed Williams' negligent-operation charge and Boissoneault's driving-under-license-suspension charge. Defendants appealed.

¶ 7. Williams and Boissoneault argue that the trial court erred in denying their motions to exclude breath-test results under Article 11 because neither of the warrant-requirement exceptions it identified applied.2 We conclude that the tests satisfied the consent exception to the warrant requirement, and therefore do not address the trial court's alternate conclusion that they were also permissible under Article 11 because they were incident to defendants' arrests for DUI. See In re M.C., 2018 VT 139, ¶ 9, 209 Vt. 219, 204 A.3d 1123 (observing that this Court will "not decide constitutional questions unnecessarily" (quotation omitted)).

¶ 8. An evidentiary breath test is a search triggering the protections of Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution. State v. Edelman, 2018 VT 100, ¶ 6, 208 Vt. 372, 198 A.3d 556. Therefore, it is permissible only where a warrant is granted based on a judicial finding of probable cause, or "pursuant to a few narrowly drawn and well-delineated exceptions ... allowed only in those extraordinary circumstances which make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable." State v. Bauder, 2007 VT 16, ¶ 14, 181 Vt. 392, 924 A.2d 38 (quotation and citations omitted); see also State v. Welch, 160 Vt. 70, 78-79, 624 A.2d 1105, 1110 (1992) (recognizing that "Article 11 does not contemplate an absolute prohibition on warrantless searches"). However, " ‘probable cause and a search warrant are not required when consent to search is voluntarily given by one authorized to do so.’ "

Edelman, 2018 VT 100, ¶ 6, 208 Vt. 372, 198 A.3d 556 (alteration omitted) (quoting State v. Zaccaro, 154 Vt. 83, 87, 574 A.2d 1256, 1259 (1990) ).

¶ 9. The crux of defendants' argument is that any consent to provide an evidentiary breath sample granted in the wake of the standard DUI Affidavit-Infrared warnings—which the implied-consent law mandates, see 23 V.S.A. § 1202(d) —is not voluntarily given as required under Article 11 because those warnings describe civil and criminal refusal penalties which burden the constitutional right to refuse a warrantless evidentiary breath test.3 But although defendants challenge the trial court's determination as to the voluntariness of their respective consents to search, they do not contest the factual findings on which that conclusion was predicated. See State v. Weisler, 2011 VT 96, ¶¶ 26, 34, 190 Vt. 344, 35 A.3d 970 (concluding that underlying historical facts are reviewed for clear error, but "the voluntariness of a consent to search, and thus the ultimate constitutional validity of the search, must be reviewed independently by this Court on appeal"). Therefore, we review the trial court's ruling on the constitutional validity of the searches at issue de novo. Id.

¶ 10. We recently explained that a defendant's submission to a law enforcement officer's warrantless request for a breath test—where that request is made, like those challenged here, in accordance with the implied-consent law's requirements—satisfies the consent exception to Article 11's warrant requirement for two reasons. Edelman, 2018 VT 100, ¶ 7, 208 Vt. 372, 198 A.3d 556. First, because the reasonableness requirement of the statute calls for a level of suspicion commensurate to a finding of probable cause, 23 V.S.A. §§ 1201(a), 1202(a)(3), the officer's request is necessarily grounded in "the same quantum of support" required to issue a search warrant to obtain the sample. Edelman, 2018 VT 100, ¶ 7, 208 Vt. 372, 198 A.3d 556 (citing Shaw v. Vt. Dist. Ct., Unit No. 3, Franklin Cir., 152 Vt. 1, 5, 563 A.2d 636, 639 (1989) ); see also State v. Perley, 2015 VT 102, ¶ 18, 200 Vt. 84, 129 A.3d 93 (recognizing with respect to implied-consent statute "that the term ‘reasonable grounds’ is akin to probable cause"). Second, and more importantly, the implied-consent statute does not require drivers to submit to the evidentiary breath test. Edelman, 2018 VT 100, ¶ 8, 208 Vt. 372, 198 A.3d 556 ("While § 1202 sets out civil and criminal penalties for the refusal to take an evidentiary breath test under some circumstances, the choice whether to take the test remains with the defendant.").

¶ 11. On this basis, we held that absent a defendant's particularized allegation that the factual circumstances of a given case rendered his consent coerced, or granted only in submission to a claim of lawful authority, the State need not prove voluntariness as a threshold matter in order for the breath test result to be admitted. Id. ¶ 10. But where a defendant asserts that he did not voluntarily consent to an officer's request for an evidentiary breath test based upon the particular circumstances of the underlying law-enforcement encounter, the State must show that defendant voluntarily submitted to the breath test in order to introduce the result at trial. Id. ¶¶ 9-10. Defendants raised such a challenge here.4

¶ 12. Voluntariness is determined from the totality of the circumstances, and "'depends heavily on...

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