Court Opinion

ID: 9705049
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:55:29.923006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:09.008014
License: Public Domain

COHEN, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority’s decision constitutes sound public policy. Were I a legislator, I would vote for it. As a judge, I cannot bring myself to do so, for that would require me to hold that this statute means the opposite of what it says.
I have railed against drunk drivers for years. See Cohen, The Case for Admitting Evidence of Refusal to Take a Breath Test, 6 Tex.Tech.L.Rev. 927 (1975). But there is a greater danger, I believe, in ruling that words mean nothing — or worse, that they mean the opposite of what they say.
Our law is clear. A driver’s license will be suspended if she “refuses to submit to the taking of a [breath] specimen, whether expressly or because of an intentional failure of the person to give the specimen .... ” See Tex. Transp. Code Ann. § 724.032(a) (Vernon 1999). Malkowsky did not do that. She did not refuse. She expressly consented. She did not “intentionally fail” to give a specimen. She repeatedly tried in good faith to do so. That is the unequivocal testimony of Deputy Palmer, the State’s witness. He testified Malkowsky was not trying to deceive him.
Malkowsky did the opposite of what the statute condemns, yet, according to the majority, her express consent nevertheless constitutes an implicit refusal. Under the statute’s plain language, Malkowsky should win. The judgment should be reversed.
The legislature cannot foresee everything, and I doubt it foresaw these facts. I have found no case like this, despite a national search.1 That gives us no commission to legislate, however. Nor do we need to. Malkowsky’s license can be seized after she is convicted, if she is. Until then, the threat to her of an additional one year in jail for another DWI *877should be a greater deterrent than the lesser sanctions provided for the offense of driving while her license is suspended. The public is protected. The legislature and the English language are respected.

. The majority's cases are all different. In Matherly, the defendant kept silent. He never agreed to give a breath sample, and he never tried to give one. 354 S.E.2d at 604-06. In Carlyle, the defendant never consented, he never tried to give a breath sample, and the police took that as a refusal. 85 Ill.Dec. 595, 474 N.E.2d at 9, 10-12. That is the opposite of what Malkowsky did. The majority's reliance on criminal law and insurance law cases is misplaced. In those cases, the offenders argued that, hut for their intoxication, they would not have done the act, i.e., that their intoxication negated their intention. Those courts correctly held that voluntary intoxication was no defense. Malkowsky argues that, despite her intoxication, she still consented to a breath sample, i.e., that her intoxication affected her physical ability, not her mental state. Section 724.032 sanctions drivers only for their bad intention, not for their lack of physical ability to comply.