Court Opinion

ID: 9580821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:09:17.494894+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:33.262827
License: Public Domain

White, J.,
concurring.
As the majority points out, the Legislature has created an offense which is defined by the amount of alcohol in the urine at the time the driver is arrested or stopped on suspicion of driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated. The offense assumes a relationship between alcohol in the blood, which affects the ability to operate a motor vehicle safely, and alcohol in the urine, which affects the intellectual and motor skills of an operator not at all.
The majority points out that the process of voiding and then testing a subsequent elimination after a period of time is not consistent with the crime created by the Legislature.
This initial voiding and subsequent testing of newly created *693and eliminated urine has been described as, at best, an unreliable indicator of alcohol content in the blood. The legislative test of immediate elimination and testing is of no probative value at all. The driver who, after a drinking bout, allows the passage of time sufficient to have allowed the blood to have freed itself from alcohol will, prior to elimination of the urine, have a concentration of alcohol in his urine sufficient to declare him legally drunk and, yet, be completely sober.
With the availability of blood and breath tests, the urine test for alcohol ought to be simply abandoned as unreliable, unworkable, and in many situations, totally unjust.
Shanahan, J., joins in this concurrence.