Court Opinion

ID: 9643656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:36:47.139304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:02.155416
License: Public Domain

ON SECOND MOTION FOR REHEARING.
MORRISON, Judge.
Appellant earnestly insists that we did not discuss in either of our prior opinions the qualifications of the witness McDonald to testify that a person who had a certain percentage of alcohol *103in his blood would be intoxicated. He now says that he is not questioning the qualifications of the witness to make the test and conclude that appellant’s blood contained .32 per cent of alcohol, but that he is questioning the qualifications of the witness to evaluate this finding in terms of degree of intoxication.
The witness McDonald testified that he had a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree and had a year’s work on his Ph. D. degree in chemistry and had two and one-half years’ experience as a chemist and toxicologist for the Texas Department of Public Safety, during the course of which he had had “quite a bit” of experience in making tests and observing the reaction of subjects having different percentages of alcohol in their blood.
This we think sufficiently qualified the witness to evaluate his findings for the benefit of the jury.
Recently, in Jones v. State, No. 26,072 (Page 29, this volume) (writ of certiorari denied by Supreme Court of the United States October 12, 1953), we had occasion to note that the States of New York and Wisconsin had adopted statutes in conformity with the findings of a committee of the American Medical Association in which presumptions were created which would support the conclusions of the witness McDonald. Ten other states have adopted similar statutes.
Appellant’s second motion for rehearing is overruled.