Tuggle v. Director of Revenue, WD

• Decision Date: 17 March 1987
• Docket Number: No. WD,WD
• Citation: 727 S.W.2d 168
• Parties: William A. TUGGLE, Respondent, v. DIRECTOR OF REVENUE, State of Missouri, Appellant. 38654.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 168

727 S.W.2d 168

William A. TUGGLE, Respondent, v. DIRECTOR OF REVENUE, State of Missouri, Appellant.

No. WD 38654.

Missouri Court of Appeals,

Western District.

March 17, 1987.

William L. Webster, Atty. Gen., James A. Chenault, III, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, for appellant.

Philip Dale Barrett, Kirksville, for respondent.

Before CLARK, and NUGENT and LOWENSTEIN, JJ.

PER CURIAM.

The Director of Revenue appeals from a judgment of the circuit court rescinding a determination made by the Department of Revenue to suspend William A. Tuggle's driving privileges in accordance with §§ 302.500-.540. ¹ Following a trial de novo, the court found that the state had failed to establish as an element of its burden of proof that Tuggle was driving a motor vehicle. Murphy v. Carron, 536 S.W.2d 30, 32 (Mo.1976) (en banc), provides the standard of review on appeal, and because the trial court erroneously applied the law in considering the sufficiency of the evidence we reverse the judgment.

An officer arrived at the scene of a traffic accident only moments after the accident occurred and found that a vehicle had been struck from behind. Mr. Tuggle was standing to the rear of that vehicle. When the officer approached and asked him what had happened, he said that he was on his way home and he had hit the parked vehicle.

While talking with Mr. Tuggle, the officer detected the odor of alcohol on his breath and he noted that his speech was somewhat slurred and hesitant and his balance somewhat impaired. No alcoholic beverage containers were found in or around Mr. Tuggle's car. After a field sobriety test, the officer found Mr. Tuggle's performance to be unsatisfactory and arrested him for driving while intoxicated. A breathalyzer test showed his blood alcohol content to be twenty-hundredths (.20) of one percent. Although the specific time cannot be ascertained from the record, Mr. Tuggle was released from police custody with his driving privileges intact. The arresting officer personally served him with a notice of suspension two days after the arrest and Mr. Tuggle surrendered his license to the officer at that time. After hearing the trial de novo, the judge ruled that the director had failed to meet his burden of proof and reinstated Mr. Tuggle's drivers license.

Specifically, the director must show, inter alia, that probable cause existed to believe that an alcohol related traffic offense has occurred. Stewart v. Director of Revenue, 702 S.W.2d 472, 475 (Mo.1986) (en banc). Here the trial judge, relying upon Kansas City v. Verstraete, 481 S.W.2d 615 (Mo.App.1972), found that Mr. Tuggle's extrajudicial admission standing alone was insufficient to establish his operation of the motor vehicle.

In Verstraete, supra, this court overturned a municipal ordinance conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on the ground that uncorroborated extrajudicial statements of an accused are not admissible to show guilt absent independent proof of the corpus delicti. Here, the trial court applied this rule with the same exclusionary effect. But that application fails to recognize the distinctions between Verstraete and this case. Verstraete was a criminal case in which the objectionable evidence was offered to establish guilt, whereas this is a civil proceeding in which the challenged evidence was offered for the purpose of establishing probable cause. § 302.535.1; Collins v. Director of Revenue, 691 S.W.2d 246, 254 (Mo.1985) (en banc).

In a similar context, this court held in Tolen v. Missouri Department of Revenue, 564 S.W.2d 601, 602 (Mo.App.1978), that the rules of evidence in criminal cases are inapplicable to administrative driver's license proceedings. In such a civil action the corpus delicti rule does not prohibit the reception of an extrajudicial statement to prove that police officers had reasonable grounds to believe that a suspect had operated his motor vehicle while intoxicated. Thus, Tolen's admission to the arresting officer that he had been driving properly served to support both his arrest for driving while intoxicated and the subsequent revocation of his driver's license upon his refusal to submit to a breathalyzer test.

Mr. Tuggle first seeks to discount our holding in Tolen by labeling it as "dicta." Inasmuch as the admissibility of Tolen's extrajudicial statement was the decisive factor in the case in that it provided the only evidence establishing Tolen's intoxication at the time he drove the vehicle, that contention clearly fails. He next notes that the revocation in Tolen was based upon § 577.050 (now § 577.041), which requires the officer to have had "reasonable grounds" to believe that the operator was driving while in an intoxicated condition. Here, on the other hand, the suspension was under § 302.505.1, which, as interpreted by the court in Collins, supra, at 252, requires the officer to have had "probable cause" to believe that the person arrested was driving in violation of the criminal statutes governing driving while intoxicated. He then asserts that the "reasonable grounds" standard under § 577.050 is far different than the "probable cause" standard of § 302.505.1; that "probable cause" is a term of art used almost exclusively in criminal cases; and that we are thus constrained to assume that the legislature used the term advisedly with the intention that the criminal law standards be met.

This argument, designed to render Tolen inapposite to the case at bar, misses the mark. First, as their respective definitions show, the perceived disparity between "reasonable grounds" and "probable cause" is illusory. In Black's Law Dictionary 1081 (5th ed. 1979), "probable cause" is described as: "Reasonable cause; having more evidence for than against. A reasonable ground for belief in the existence of facts warranting the proceedings complained of." Similarly, "reasonable grounds" is defined in...