Court Opinion

ID: 9709563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:51:07.913227+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:50.130845
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge,
concurring.
The evidence in this case may have permitted an inference that because traces of cocaine were found in Vorm’s system, an ingestion of that substance had to have taken place. It might additionally be concluded that to have ingested the cocaine, he had to have possessed it at some prior time. That is not the question before us, however. We should not be solely concerned with whether at some previous time, before ingestion, he was in possession of the substance. That may or may not be so.
The charge before us premises the possession not upon prior ingestion but upon an allegation that “the same cocaine” previously possessed and ingested, was “present in the bodily systems of Neis Eric Vorm”. Record at 4. (Emphasis supplied). The assertion is therefore that Vorm was in possession of cocaine at the time of the taking of the urine sample. The evidence is otherwise.
The substance found in Vorm’s urine was described as “cocaine metabolites”. A metabolite is “a product of one metabolic process that is essential to another such process in the same organism.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1976 ed.). In United States v. Sixty 28-Capsule Bottles (1962) D.N.J., 211 F.Supp. 207, 209, the court acknowledged that “metabolic” was descriptive of the “alterations in the biological or biochemical activity of various cells under various conditions.” Furthermore, the basic term, metabolism is derived from a German word meaning “to turn about, change or alter”. Sloane-Dorland Annotated Medical-Legal Dictionary (1987) p. 445. It is clear, therefore, that a substance which has undergone the metabolic process does not retain its original chemical nature or form. The substance within Vorm’s system was *112not, therefore, either pure or adulterated cocaine as required for conviction under I.C. 35-48-4-6(a). The word “adulterated” contemplates the addition of some other substance or ingredient not an alteration in chemical makeup of the basic'substance itself. Sloane-Dorland, supra at p. 13; see Lawhorn v. State (1983) Ind., 452 N.E.2d 915.
In the case before us, the substance present in the urine may have been cocaine at one time but its chemical makeup had been altered by the metabolic process. It was no longer cocaine at the crucial time of the alleged possession.
I voice no view with respect to the validity of those cases cited in the majority opinion which hold that although presence of a substance in the system is circumstantial evidence that the substance was previously possessed, such evidence will not suffice for conviction. I understand a degree of reluctance to convict solely upon finding traces of a substance through urinalysis or other chemical testing of bodily fluids. However, I am hesitant to seize upon the tenuous basis of distinction relied upon in State v. Lewis (1986) Minn.App., 394 N.W.2d 212, and State v. Flinchpaugh (1983) 232 Kan. 831, 659 P.2d 208. Those cases, at least in part, focused upon the knowing or conscious element of a possession charge and speculated that the substance in question might have been introduced into a defendant’s system “by trick or guile, or injected involuntarily.” State v. Lewis, supra, 394 N.W.2d at 215. Unless the facts of a case suggest such a scenario, I find it difficult to use the remote possibility in order to hold that a defendant was not in prior possession.
Suffice it to say that I concur because at the time the urine sample was taken, Vorm was not in possession of cocaine.