Case Name: STATE OF OREGON, Appellant, v. DALLAS LEE ROLES,Respondent
Court: Oregon Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: Oregon
Decision Date: 1979-06-25
Citations: 40 Or. App. 805
Docket Number: No. T49978 & T49979, CA 12802
Parties: STATE OF OREGON, Appellant, v. DALLAS LEE ROLES,Respondent.
Judges: Before Schwab, Chief Judge, Thornton, Buttler, Joseph, Judges, and Peterson, Judge Pro Tempore.
Reporter: Oregon Reports, Court of Appeals
Volume: 40
Pages: 805–808

Head Matter:
Argued May 31,
reversed and remanded for trial June 25,
reconsideration denied August 14, petition for review denied September 18, 1979, 287 Or 409
STATE OF OREGON, Appellant, v. DALLAS LEE ROLES,Respondent.
(No. T49978 & T49979, CA 12802)
596 P2d 614
James M. Brown, Salem, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the brief were James A. Redden, Attorney General, and Walter L. Barrie, Solicitor General, Salem.
Larry W. Stuber, Albany, argued the cause for respondent. On the brief were James G. Nelson, and Goode, Goode, Decker, Beckham & Nelson, P.C., Albany.
Before Schwab, Chief Judge, Thornton, Buttler, Joseph, Judges, and Peterson, Judge Pro Tempore.
JOSEPH, J.

Opinion:
JOSEPH, J.
Defendant was charged with driving under the influence of intoxicants. ORS 487.540. Prior to trial his motion to suppress the results of a breathalyzer test was granted, and the state appeals.
The basis for defendant's motion was that the breathalyzer result was unreliable because at the time of his arrest he was participating in an Antabuse treatment program. Defendant offered evidence that when one consumes alcohol, it is broken down in the body to acetaldehyde and then to acetone. Antabuse retards the breakdown of acetaldehyde, causing it to build up to abnormal levels, which causes nausea and vomiting — reactions defendant claimed to have had after drinking beer on the evening before his arrest. Records indicated that he had taken Antabuse on several days in the period just before he was arrested.
Expert witnesses who testified at the hearing on the motion to suppress agreed that a person in whom alcohol and Antabuse had interacted would have an abnormally high level of acetaldehyde and that acetaldehyde would react with the same chemicals with which alcohol reacts in the breathalyzer process. The experts disagreed, however, as to whether the acetaldehyde might significantly affect the breathalyzer reading. The result of the breathalyzer test given defendant is not disclosed by the record.
The suppression of the breathalyzer result was erroneous, because defendant's arguments went to the weight to be accorded the test result, not its admissibility. Whether and to what extent the Antabuse may have affected the blood alcohol reading were issues for the trial on the merits, not issues to be determined by the court prior to trial on a motion to suppress.
Reversed and remanded for trial.
The trial found that
"[t]here is no accepted, recognized scientific basis to establish or to reject the validity of the breathalyzer results where defendant has consummed [sic] alcoholic beverage where antabuse is present in his system."