Court Opinion

ID: 9778532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:11:24.930291+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:11.331615
License: Public Domain

Johnson, J.,
dissenting: I respectfully dissent from the majority’s determination that under the factual circumstances presented in this case the district court erred, as a matter of law, in finding that Trooper Walker did not possess reasonable grounds to request a breath test without the preliminary breath test (PBT) results. I would defer to the district court’s assessment of witness credibility and its weighing of the competing facts.
The majority pays lip service to the appropriate manner in which to determine probable cause, i.e., “by evaluating the totality of the circumstances.” It even acknowledges that the totality of the circumstances test does not involve a “rigid application of factors” and that “courts should not merely count the facts or factors that support one side of the determination or the other.” 292 Kan. at 657. Yet, after opining that the probable cause standards inform our review of reasonable grounds, the majority supports its reversal of the district court by enumerating only those portions of the trooper’s testimony that support the State’s side of the equation.
Even though Allen did not challenge the State’s factual recitation, he pointed out a number of factors that indicate he was not legally impaired, such as passing the one-leg-stand field sobriety test. A review of the totality of the circumstances should, as the phrase implies, also include a consideration of the exculpatory factors. The trial court must weigh the competing factors to develop *661an overall picture of what the circumstances reasonably indicated to the trooper. By cherry-picking the trooper’s testimony to glean a list of inculpatory factors without placing them in the context of Allen’s exculpatory conduct, the majority has essentially reviewed the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, which lost below. Cf. Unruh v. Purina Mills, 289 Kan. 1185, 1195, 221 P.3d 1130 (2009) (when verdict challenged as contrary to the evidence, appellate court considers the evidence in the light most favorable to the prevailing party).
Moreover, I do not find Smith v. Kansas Dept. of Revenue, 291 Kan. 510, 242 P.3d 1179 (2010), to be as persuasive as the majority. In Smith, the district court found the existence of reasonable grounds and made specific findings in its journal entry. Smith’s list of inculpatory factors was gleaned from the district court’s findings and was used to affirm, the district court’s ruling. That process was consistent with our directive to give deference to the district court’s findings of fact, accepting as true the evidence and any inferences that support or tend to support the district court’s findings. See State v. Combs, 280 Kan. 45, 47, 118 P.3d 1259 (2005).
In contrast, the district court in this case did not make specific factual findings in support of its ruling that the trooper did not have reasonable grounds to request a breath test. Ordinarily, we would presume that the trial court found all the facts necessary to support its judgment. Hodges v. Johnson, 288 Kan. 56, 65, 199 P.3d 1251 (2009). Instead, the majority went in search of evidence that would not support or tend to support the district court’s ruling and compiled its own list of relevant facts, which it then compared to the judgment-supporting list in Smith. Accordingly, I would not find the factual comparison with Smith to be the answer to reviewing the totality of the circumstances in this case.
The problem with an appellate court focusing entirely on the inculpatory facts, rather than the totality of the circumstances, is poignantly illustrated by the trooper’s testimony about Allen’s performance on the field sobriety tests. The trooper acknowledged that Allen passed the one-leg stand. However, the trooper opined that Allen exhibited three clues on the walk-and-tum test, which he characterized as a test failure. Allen contends that the descrip*662tion of his performance on the walk-and-tum indicates that he performed fairly well on the test. We do not know whether the district court may have agreed with Allen, viewing the trooper s “clues” on the walk-and-turn test as slight or technical errors and placing considerably more weight on Allen’s successful completion of the one-leg-stand test. Accordingly, I would have deferred to the district court’s weighting of the evidence and affirmed its determination that the trooper did not possess reasonable grounds to request a breath test without the PBT results.
Bruce T. Gatterman, District Judge, assigned.