Court Opinion

ID: 9715714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:12:39.847133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:37.431799
License: Public Domain

GARRARD, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Pursuant to Ind.Evidence Rule 201(a) Indiana courts may (and shall if requested by a party) take judicial notice of facts that are not subject to reasonable dispute in that they are capable of accurate and ready determination by resort to sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.
We should judicially notice the fact that when metabolites of marijuana are present in a person’s urine it is because they are also present in that person’s blood. Judge Chez-em cited two of the available and generally accepted sources for this fact in her dissent in Estes v. State, 656 N.E.2d 528 at 529. In so stating I recognize that it may be technically possible to inject such metabolites into a person’s bladder using a hypodermic syringe or some such device, but the potential for that is so remote that absent any evidence to that effect judicial notice should apply. When illicit drugs are taken into the body by injection, inhalation or ingestion, they are absorbed in the blood, metabolized and excreted in the feces or urine. We should not, under the guise of statutory interpretation, ignore the simple physiological facts of life.
I believe that Estes, Hoomaert and Moore, relied on by the majority, were simply wrongly decided and should be overruled.
The evidence that Rhoades had marijuana metabolites in her urine at the time of the collision provided an adequate factual basis for her plea.
The trial court’s decision should be affirmed.