Court Opinion

ID: 9631937
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:56:15.456211+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:04.177938
License: Public Domain

POWELL, Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot agree that the trial court erred in permitting the State to prove in chief that the defendant had refused to submit to a sobriety test.
By no stretch of the imagination could it be said that such proof requires an accused to testify against himself, any more than evidence by others of any other actions and conduct of an accused in connection with an offense with which he may stanu charged.
*628I think the case of Duckworth v. State, Okl.Cr., 309 P.2d 1103, cited as authority for the present holding is basically unsound, and not supported by logic or reason. My views are set out in detail in the Duck-worth case at pages 1106-1107, and 1109— 1110 of the official Pacific Reporter.
The Duckworth case has been analyzed in an article by William J. Welch, Esq., appearing at pages 331-334 of the Oklahoma Law Review of August, 1957, Vol. 10, No. 3, entitled: “Criminal Law: Evidence: Effect of Comment on Refusal to Submit to Intoximeter Test”. That article, too, points out the fallacy of the reasoning in the Duckworth case, and effectively.
Perhaps the Legislature taking official notice of the fact of the mounting deaths on the highways of this State caused by drivers who have partaken of alcoholic beverages, will enact legislation requiring as a prerequisite for the use of the State highways, all reasonable cooperation on the part of the travelling public in accepting scientific tests, where the question, arises as to whether or not an involved driver is under the influence of opiates or alcohol.