Court Opinion

ID: 9649324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:48:44.954556+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:09.708230
License: Public Domain

CHAVEZ, Justice,
dissenting.
I concur in the majority’s holding that the blood sample evidence was improperly admitted. However, because I disagree with the majority’s analysis of whether this error had a substantial effect on the verdict, I dissent.
The blood sample constituted evidence that Cavazos was drunk several hours after the accident. However, this was also proven by the testimony of the police officers who arrested Cavazos. The majority correctly notes that, when he was arrested at 7:00 a.m., four and a half hours after the accident, Cavazos “had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath, bloodshot eyes, and spoke with slurred speech.” The majority also notes the testimony of one the officers that “there is no doubt in my mind that he was intoxicated.” *459Yet the majority inexplicably concludes that “the blood sample evidence and the testimony extrapolated therefrom [were] the only evidence that appellant was legally intoxicated at the relevant time.”
If the blood sample, which was drawn at approximately 10:00 a.m., provided evidence that Cavazos was intoxicated when the accident occurred, then surely the arresting officers’ testimony regarding Cavazos’s intoxicated condition when they arrested him at 7:00 a.m. was also evidence that he was intoxicated at the time of the accident. The blood sample evidence added nothing substantial to the officers’ testimony; rather it only reiterated their assessment by showing that he was still near the legal limit for intoxication when his blood was tested a few hours after his arrest.
The majority acknowledges that the arresting officer’s testimony was evidence of appellant’s intoxication at the time of arrest, but it finds this evidence “insufficient” to show that Cavazos was the driver of the car or that Cavazos was intoxicated at the time of the accident. The majority’s discussion of whether the State proved that Cavazos was the driver of the car involved in the accident is misplaced. The issue before us is whether the erroneous inclusion of the blood sample evidence had a substantial effect on the verdict. Whether the blood sample evidence is included. or excluded has no bearing on whether the State met its burden to prove that Cavazos was behind the wheel. Cavazos did not challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his conviction, and none of his points of error relate even tangentially to whether Cavazos was the driver. The state of the evidence showing that Cavazos was the driver is simply irrelevant to this appeal.
Similarly, while I agree that the evidence establishing that Cavazos was intoxicated at the time of the accident is not particularly strong, the issue before is not the overall sufficiency of the evidence, but what effect the blood sample evidence had on the verdict. The principle weaknesses of the State’s case were the lack of direct evidence that Cavazos was behind the wheel, and the State’s inability to account for Cavazos’s whereabouts and activities between the time of the accident and the time of his arrest, which left open the possibility that he became intoxicated only after the accident. However, the blood sample evidence does nothing to address either of these weaknesses. Because all the blood sample evidence accomplished was to echo the testimony of the arresting officers, I would hold that the erroneous inclusion of the blood sample evidence did not have a substantial effect on the verdict, and I would affirm the conviction.
FEDERICO G. HINOJOSA, Jr., and RODRIGUEZ, JJ., join the dissent.