Court Opinion

ID: 9690711
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 19:36:45.597368+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:02.386960
License: Public Domain

SCOTT, Justice,
dissents:
Although I concur on all other grounds, I respectfully dissent from my esteemed colleagues’ opinion that a retroactive hearing is required to show that the trooper had reasonable grounds to justify testing Ms. Helton’s blood alcohol level. I dissent because Appellant concedes in her brief that “[t]he Commonwealth certainly had belief that alcohol had been involved in the accident on August 26th, 2006.” Appellant’s Brief, at pg. 9. Thus, Appellant’s attack at trial and on appeal was on constitutional and statutory grounds, not factual ones. Trial courts need the leeway to perform those trial tasks that they and counsel consider appropriate under the pertinent facts of each case. Hearings on matters conceded by counsel unduly interfere with this valuable discretion.
*565The record shows that Appellant took her children, an adult friend, and two other children swimming. She consumed alcohol, resumed driving, and drove her vehicle off the road. Her son and his young friends were killed and the adult friend died later from her injuries. Appellant was accompanied to the hospital by the police who informed her of the effect of her refusal under KRS 189A.105(2)(a). The officers perceived Appellant to be in a stupor incapable of refusal and took a blood test under the implied consent of KRS 189A.103(2). The reasonable grounds of drunk driving required by 189A.103(1) would appear satisfied by Appellant’s concession as well as the circumstances that the police accompanied Appellant from the driver’s seat of a horrific accident to the hospital where she was effectively uncommunicative; not to mention that at the suppression hearing the Commonwealth informed the trial court that at the time the blood test was taken the officers informed Helton about implied consent and that she did not refuse, but just “sort of passed out” and closed her eyes.
I, therefore, respectfully dissent.