Case Title: State v. Winfrey

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: hawaii

Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Date: 2009-09-16T00:00:00Z

Document:
The Honorable Lenore K.J.H. Lee presided.
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NO. 28737
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF HAWAI#I 
_________________________________________________________________
STATE OF HAWAI#I,
Respondent/Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
KENNETH MICHAEL WINFREY,
Petitioner/Defendant-Appellant.
_________________________________________________________________
CERTIORARI TO THE INTERMEDIATE COURT OF APPEALS
(HPD TRAFFIC NO. 1DTC-07-014931)
ORDER AFFIRMING JUDGMENT ON APPEAL
(By:  Moon, C.J., Nakayama, and Recktenwald, JJ.;
and Duffy, J., Dissenting, with whom Acoba, J., joins)
Petitioner/defendant-appellant Kenneth Michael Winfrey 
filed a timely application for a writ of certiorari from the 
judgment of the Intermediate Court of Appeals (ICA) filed May 18,
2009, entered pursuant to the ICA’s April 29, 2009 Summary
Disposition Order, which affirmed the August 3, 2007 judgment of
the District Court of the First Circuit (district court).   This
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court accepted certiorari on September 16, 2009, and subsequently
held oral argument on November 5, 2009.  
Upon careful review of the record and the briefs
submitted by the parties and having given due consideration to
the arguments advanced and the issues raised, and also having
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heard and carefully considered the parties’ respective arguments
at oral argument, we conclude that Winfrey did not preserve his
objections to the testimony concerning the speed check, and that
those objections were therefore waived.
We further conclude that the admission of that
testimony did not constitute plain error.  The decision to notice 
plain error is discretionary and must be “exercised sparingly and
with caution because the plain error rule represents a departure
from a presupposition of the adversary system - that a party must
look to his or her counsel for protection and bear the cost of
counsel’s mistakes.”  State v. Fields, 115 Hawai#i 503, 529, 168
P.3d 955, 981 (2007) (citation omitted); State v. Fox, 70 Haw.
46, 56, 760 P.2d 670, 676 (1988) (noting that the decision
whether to notice plain error “must turn on the facts of the
particular case to correct errors that seriously affect the
fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial
proceedings”) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
This court has previously declined to notice plain
error when a defendant fails to preserve his or her objection to
inadmissible evidence.  In State v. Wallace, 80 Hawai#i 382, 409-
10, 910 P.2d 695, 722-23 (1996), the defendant argued that the
State failed to establish a sufficient foundation to admit a
police officer’s testimony about the gross weight of cocaine
seized from the defendant’s car because the State did not
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establish that the scale used to measure the cocaine was
accurate.  We held that the foundational objection was waived,
because although the defendant had objected to the testimony at
trial, he did so on the basis of relevancy, not on the basis that
the prosecution failed to establish the accuracy of the scale.
Id. at 410, 910 P.2d at 723.  This court did not find plain error
in these circumstances.  Id. (citing State v. Naeole, 62 Haw.
563, 570-71, 617 P.2d 820, 826 (1980)).  
Moreover, Winfrey cannot overcome the effect of his
waiver by suggesting that the testimony was insufficient to
support a conviction because foundation was lacking.  To the
contrary, this court stated in Wallace that “[t]he rule is well
settled that evidence even though incompetent, if admitted
without objection or motion to strike, is to be given the same
probative force as that to which it would be entitled if it were
competent.” 80 Hawai#i at 410, 910 P.2d at 723 (quoting 2
Wharton’s Criminal Evidence § 265 n.3 (14th ed. 1986) (internal
quotation marks omitted)).  Accordingly, we observed that “[i]t
is the general rule that evidence to which no objection has been
made may properly be considered by the trier of fact and its
admission will not constitute grounds for reversal.”  Id. (citing
Naeole, 62 Haw. at 570-71, 617 P.2d at 826); State v. Samuel, 74
Haw. 141, 147, 838 P.2d 1374, 1378 (1992)); see People v. Rigsby,
890 N.E.2d 1146, 1148-51 (Ill. App. Ct. 2008) (defendant was
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convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol and argued
that a police officer’s testimony about defendant’s breath test
was inadmissible because the accuracy of the machine used to
conduct the test had not been properly established; the court
held that any error in the admission of the breath test results
was not plain error since “foundational issues go to the
admissibility of the evidence, not the sufficiency of the
evidence”) (citation omitted).
Accordingly,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the ICA’s May 18, 2009
judgment on appeal is affirmed.
DATED:  Honolulu, Hawai#i, December 22, 2009.
Brian Vincent
(Deputy Prosecuting Attorney)
for Respondent/Plaintiff-
Appellee
James S. Tabe 
(Deputy Public Defender) 
for Petitioner/Defendant-
Appellant