Court Opinion

ID: 9836941
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-02 03:15:35.531614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:45:19.402461
License: Public Domain

SULLIVAN, Judge
(dissenting):
I dissent. I agree with the majority that the trial judge committed error by using the wrong legal standard when she evaluated the evidence in deciding the motion to suppress. *13Unlike the majority, I cannot find that this key legal error was harmless. The undisputed facts surrounding giving the consent when viewed through the eyes of a reasonable person are rather a close call on the existence of voluntary consent. I don’t see how the majority can say that it was harmless for the judge to weigh the facts at the suppression hearing using a clearly wrong legal standard. If the judge had used the right standard, perhaps the judge would have suppressed the urinalysis evidence.* Without the urinalysis evidence, the prosecution had no case at all. Accordingly, the judge’s error cannot be viewed as harmless.
It is important to note that this error was not even mentioned at the court below or uncovered by that court in its review. This error was first uncovered by our Court in its review and the issue was granted as a specified issue by our Court. Thus, the court below with its special factfinding power has never had the opportunity to examine whether the judge’s error was harmless. I dissent because in my view the facts and fair play required our Court (a court of law) to remand this case to the court below to let them use their statutory powers to determine whether the trial judge’s error was harmless or whether that error deprived appellant of a full and fair consideration of his motion to suppress.
If the court below finds the error was not harmless, perhaps then that court should remand the case to the trial level for an eviden-tiary hearing where this appellant could have his rightful fair and legally correct hearing on his suppression motion.

 The facts that were presented to the judge at the fatally flawed suppression hearing do raise evidence that could lead a reasonable person to believe that there might not have been voluntary consent to the urinalysis. The fact that appellant at the hospital was diagnosed as having “post-concussive syndrome” may lead a factfinder to rule that appellant did not have the full mental faculties to give voluntary consent. The fact that CMSgt Johnson, appellant’s First Sergeant, and SMSgt Ross, appellant's immediate supervisor, took appellant to a small room in the hospital to ask for his consent may lead a factfinder to find this procedure a coercive enough military environment to void the consent. The further fact that appellant was given the impression that the urinalysis was part of the medical treatment for his head injury may alone lead a factfinder to rule that tricking a injured person to consent to a urinalysis when he is at the hospital for a head injury may not be a voluntary act. The person in the hospital may believe that giving some of his body fluids for testing was a necessary medical procedure in order to receive proper medical treatment. All of the above facts do raise the question of voluntariness and should have been presented to a factfinder who was using the correct legal standard to view the facts.