Opinion ID: 844141
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prosecution’s Evidence at Trial

Text: On the evening of August 18, 2007, defendant was working at a restaurant in Julian, San Diego County. Three times that evening, the restaurant‘s bartenders served defendant single shots of tequila: the first at 8:30 p.m. (during her work shift), the other two between 9:45 p.m. (when her shift ended) and 10:15 p.m. Shortly before 11:00 p.m., defendant left in her sport utility vehicle (SUV). On a narrow, curving road, the SUV struck the driver‘s side of a pickup truck traveling in the opposite direction, killing the driver, Allan Wolowsky. Defendant was seriously injured; while being airlifted to a hospital, she told an emergency medical technician that she had ―a couple of drinks‖ at work, that she had been driving ―really fast,‖ and that she had lost control of her SUV. At the hospital, at 1:04 a.m. (approximately two hours after the accident), two vials of blood were drawn from defendant for testing. At defendant‘s jury trial, criminalist John Willey of the San Diego County Sheriff‘s Regional Crime Laboratory testified that he had reviewed a laboratory report by his colleague, Jorge Peña, who had analyzed defendant‘s blood sample. (As noted earlier, Peña did not testify; the prosecution did not assert that Peña was unavailable as a witness.) Willey mentioned that, as described in Peña‘s report, Peña had used a gas chromatograph to analyze defendant‘s blood sample. The report, Willey testified, stated that defendant‘s blood sample contained a blood- 2 alcohol concentration of 0.09 percent.1 Willey added that based on his own ―separate abilities as a criminal analyst,‖ he too concluded that the blood-alcohol concentration in defendant‘s blood sample was 0.09 percent. Willey had been in the laboratory‘s employ for more than 17 years and knew its ―procedures for processing blood samples for alcohol analysis.‖ Willey explained that he had trained Peña and was ―intimately familiar with [Peña‘s] procedures and how [Peña] tests [blood for] alcohol,‖ and that ―each of the people who work[] at the lab is trained to process blood alcohol analysis in the same manner.‖ At the prosecution‘s request, the trial court admitted into evidence a copy of Peña‘s laboratory report. Defendant objected to the report‘s admission as well as to Willey‘s testimony about its contents. Toxicologist John Treuting testified that a person with a blood-alcohol level of 0.09 percent two hours after a collision who had consumed no alcohol during those two hours would at the time of the accident have been intoxicated (see p. 3, fn. 1, ante), with a blood-alcohol level of 0.12 percent. Treuting said that if, as the restaurant‘s bartenders testified, defendant had only a single shot of tequila about three-and-a-half hours before the accident and two more single shots of tequila 1 Vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated (Pen. Code, § 191.5, subd. (b)), the crime with which defendant was charged, occurs when a defendant commits an act of vehicular manslaughter while ―driving . . . in violation of Section 23140, 23152, or 23153 of the Vehicle Code . . . .‖ (Ibid.) Under these Vehicle Code provisions, the prosecution may prove intoxication by showing that the defendant‘s blood-alcohol level was 0.08 percent or greater at the time of the accident (see Veh. Code, § 23152, subd. (b); id., § 23153, subd. (b)); or, if the defendant‘s blood-alcohol level was lower than 0.08 percent, by showing that the alcohol made the defendant unable to ―drive . . . with the caution of a sober person, using ordinary care, under similar circumstances.‖ (CALCRIM No. 2110; see Veh. Code, § 23152, subd. (a); id., § 23153, subd. (a); People v. Schoonover (1970) 5 Cal.App.3d 101, 105-107.) 3 between 45 and 90 minutes before the accident, defendant‘s blood-alcohol level should have been only around 0.04 percent. Treuting added that the 0.12 percent level might have been achieved if defendant had double shots of tequila instead of the single shots to which the bartenders testified. Two California Highway Patrol officers who had investigated the fatal collision testified about its cause: After defendant had veered onto the right-hand shoulder of the narrow road, she ―overcorrected‖ and drove into the oncoming lane, colliding with Wolowsky‘s pickup truck. Accident reconstruction expert Ernest Phillips testified that defendant had been driving between 68 and 75 miles per hour, and that after drifting onto the right shoulder of the road, she steered to the left into oncoming traffic, causing the collision. Phillips attributed the accident to defendant‘s speed, intoxication, and inattention.