Court Opinion

ID: 9859094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 18:41:22.105831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:06:11.439888
License: Public Domain

LEE ANN DAUPHINOT, Justice,
dissenting on rehearing.
I must respectfully dissent from the majority opinion’s holding that the refusal to participate in field sobriety tests is damning evidence that we must consider in performing a de novo substantial evidence review of an ALJ’s decision on probable cause. That is, I cannot agree that an absence of evidence must perforce constitute evidence of guilt. Does a person who refuses to give a statement to the police or to be interviewed by the police do so only because to provide a statement or an interview would reveal his guilt, and, on appeal, must we then treat the absence of a statement or an interview as evidence of guilt?
Suppose a person refuses to consent to a search of his vehicle, his home, his office, or his person. Suppose he refuses to consent to a search of a home, vehicle, or office he shares with someone else. Suppose a person refuses to voluntarily provide a voice exemplar, or hair follicles, or a blood sample, or a handwriting sample. Suppose a person refuses to allow his child to be interviewed. Is this evidence of his guilt?
The law clearly provides that a person may refuse to participate in any interview by the police or, having begun to participate, may terminate the interview at any point.1 This is true whether a person is or is not in custody. How, then, can we say that if a person invokes his right not to speak with the police and not to perform demonstrations for the police, we must consider this decision as evidence of guilt?
*882Even the statute that permits the trier of fact to consider the refusal to submit to a breath test, under the implied consent rule, does not mandate that the refusal be considered as evidence of guilt.2 As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has explained,
[A]lthough Section 724.061 of the Texas Transportation Code expressly allows the court to admit the evidence of a defendant’s refusal to take a breath test, there is no statutory language that directs the jury to attach any special weight or significance to such evidence. That the statute expressly makes the evidence admissible does not, by itself, also authorize the trial court to single it out for the jury’s particular attention ....
Nor does Texas law anywhere establish any presumption that arises in a DWI case from the defendant’s refusal to take a breath test. Evidence of the appellant’s refusal to submit to a breath test is relevant for precisely the reason that the trial court identified in the contested jury instruction, namely, that it tends to show a consciousness of guilt on his part. But Section 724.061 of the Transportation Code does not establish a legally recognized presumption of consciousness of guilt that follows from the fact of refusal. We are aware of no other statutory language that expressly authorizes the jury to presume a consciousness of guilt from the refusal to take a breath test. In the absence of such a legal presumption, it is improper for the trial court to instruct the jury with respect to inferences that may or may not be drawn from evidentiary facts to ultimate or elemental facts.3
Clearly, the officer’s questioning of Gil-feather at the side of the road was an interview, and even an interrogation. Unquestionably, Gilfeather was not free to leave. At no time did the officer provide any of the warnings mandated by state or federal law. Gilfeather declined to participate in field sobriety tests because his father, a lawyer and a judge, had advised him not to participate in them. The majority holds that we must consider this decision not as evidence that Gilfeather was thinking clearly enough to very politely explain his father’s advice and to follow it but as evidence of intoxication.
Evidence of a person’s refusal to submit to a breath test is deemed admissible by statute under the implied consent provision.4 Nowhere has the legislature provided implied consent to participate in field sobriety tests. Evidence that Gilfeather declined to participate in field sobriety tests is simply evidence that he declined to participate in field sobriety tests. It is not evidence of his ability or inability to perform such field sobriety tests.
I cannot agree with the majority’s mandate that we must consider the absence of evidence as evidence of guilt. I would hold that Gilfeather’s decision not to participate in that portion of the interview was a decision to decline to participate in that portion of the interview. I cannot, as does the majority, say that we must consider his declining the officer’s request to perform on the side of the road as evidence of guilt. I therefore must respectfully dissent.

. Tex.Code Crim. Proc. Ann. art. 38.22, § 2(a) (Vernon 2005); see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 445, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 1612, 16 L.Ed.2d 694(1966).

. See Tex. Transp. Code Ann. § 724.061 (Vernon 1999).

. Bartlett v. State, 270 S.W.3d 147, 152-53 (Tex.Crim.App.2008) (citations omitted).

. See Tex. Transp. Code Ann. § 724.061.