Court Opinion

ID: 9861616
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 00:13:38.253296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:42.430899
License: Public Domain

SCHULTZ, Justice
(concurring specially).
Although I agree with the majority that Steadman’s test results should not have been suppressed, I reach this result after applying the legal test announced in Brown. Id. 337 N.W.2d at 511. I do not agree that Brown is inapplicable in implied consent cases. Rather, I conclude Brown applies in any case where the acquisition and preservation of a sample for independent testing by a defendant is material to his defense and there is a reasonable probability it would be favorable to him.
*176While implied consent procedures undoubtedly lessen the chance for errors, machines and humans are fallible. Moreover, these procedures do little more than require probable cause for an arrest, the use of testing devices and methods approved by the commissioner of public safety and, in the case of a blood test, place restrictions on who may take the sample and what kind of withdrawal device may be used.
Conversely, the department only requires the intoxilyzer to be calibrated annually, does not provide for any quality control in each testing event and does not even require more than one sampling and testing of a defendant’s breath. Additionally, the testing device is nonspecific for alcohol raising the possibility that the test results could be erroneously inflated by contamination from other hydrocarbons that absorb light at the wavelength used to detect alcohol. Finally, potential errors may also result from the internal computation process. Although the instrument measures the amount of alcohol in deep-lung air, the result is converted to blood alcohol content by multiplying the breath result by 2100 (this calculation is based on a fixed ratio of alcohol in lung air to that in blood). Thus, any slight contamination or error in the breath analysis would be considerably magnified by the subsequent computation.
The seriousness of these problems is compounded by the fact that a blood alcohol of .13 standing alone is sufficient for conviction under section 321.281(l)(b), and a reading of .10 raises a presumption that a defendant was driving while impaired in violation of section 321.281(l)(a). Moreover, the State has no obligation to inform defendant of his statutory right to an independent test, making this right largely illusory since he cannot exercise a right he does not know about and cannot complain about the State’s failure to tell him.
For all these reasons, I cannot join the majority’s reasoning that compliance with Chapter 321B procedures adequately protects a defendant in every case and effectively forecloses a due process challenge to the results of a state-administered test. Contrary to the holding of the trial court, I would hold that Steadman’s due process rights were not violated. Under the record, there was not an unavoidable possibility that the acquisition and preservation of a sample for later testing by Steadman would have been favorable to him. Thus, I join the result reached by the majority.
REYNOLDSON, C.J., joins this special concurrence.