Court Opinion

ID: 9757787
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:58:58.811448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:44.409334
License: Public Domain

Peck, J.,
dissenting. For the reasons set forth below, I am firmly convinced that the disposition of this case by the majority is wrong, and that there exist more than ample grounds to affirm based on our own precedential holdings. Accordingly, I have no choice but to dissent.
I do agree with the majority that the suppression court’s findings 10 and 12 are not proper as findings of fact. Finding 10 is a mere recitation of testimony: “[T]he witness, Trooper Yustin, explained that. . . .” Had the court even added, “and the court so finds,” it might have been saved. However, it did not do so, and this “recitation” cannot, therefore, be relied on to support the order. Similarly, finding 12 merely recites an opinion of the police without any factual conclusion based thereon.
Findings 10 and 12 would, if properly phrased, have provided strong support for the lower court’s conclusion that “the mental capacity of the Defendant was not so overborne by his alcoholic condition that he could not have been conceived to be able to comprehend such rights and make a knowing waiver thereof.”
The court found that defendant told the police “You can’t get me for D.U.I.,” and further that he told the police he was going to sue them.
When defendant was asked if he wished an attorney, he “replied that he did not need one, that he’d been through the process before and knew how to handle the situation.”
After he had been advised of his rights, the court said that defendant “stated he would not answer any questions.” He reconsidered almost immediately and said, “ ‘You ask the questions and I tell you whether I’ll answer it’; or words to that effect.”
The court found that defendant refused to discuss where *14he had been drinking and when he had taken his last drink, but that he answered all the other questions on page 2 of the processing form, “and such answers were logical and appropriate.”
When the police started to explain to defendant the procedure by which a breath sample test is given, the court found that he stated he understood the procedure “in that he had been through it in the past . . . and knew how to do it. . . .”
These findings show clearly that defendant’s responses are those of a reasonably intelligent person who understood and was fully aware of the situation he was in. Indeed his responses were far more coherent, logical, intelligent, and appropriate than those of many other D.U.I. suspects we have had occasion to review. Cf. Stockwell v. District Court, 143 Vt. 45, 460 A.2d 466 (1983).
The fact that the court applied the wrong standard of review is not fatal. “Misapplications of the law to supported or unchallenged findings are subject to corrective appellate review.” Bolduc v. Coffin, 133 Vt. 67, 69, 329 A.2d 655, 656 (1974) (citation omitted). Moreover, nothing has been brought to our attention to suggest that the motion to suppress was renewed during the trial on the merits, or that any objection was made at trial to the admission of his incriminating statement. We will not search the record for errors; if they do exist, they have not been brought to our attention.
We are concerned here only with the suppression hearing which took place before a different judge than the judge who presided at the trial on the merits. The error was harmless since the evidence and the proper findings would support the conclusion if the correct “preponderance of the evidence” standard had been applied. Indeed, even the error is not in the conclusion itself. That is supportable under either criteria. The sole mistake was the citation to State v. Pease, 129 Vt. 70, 271 A.2d 835 (1970), as authority for the conclusion. But since it is unmistakable in my judgment that the conclusion is supported by the findings and an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence, it is impossible for me to comprehend how the defendant has shown any prejudice, State v. Baldwin, 140 Vt. 501, 514, 438 A.2d 1135, 1142 (1981), or the error anything but completely harmless. Timney v. Worden, 138 Vt. 444, 445, 417 A.2d 923, 924 (1980).
*15Finally, we have held many times that we will affirm the lower court if there is any legal basis for doing so. Frost v. Tisbert, 135 Vt. 345, 347, 376 A.2d 748, 751 (1977). In the case before us the court reached a proper and adequately supported conclusion, albeit for the wrong reason; that does not require reversal. “A trial court can achieve the right result for the wrong reason.” Gilwee v. Town of Barre, 138 Vt. 109, 111, 412 A.2d 300, 301 (1980). I would affirm.