Court Opinion

ID: 9847460
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:00:12.785269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:13.857662
License: Public Domain

WARDEN, J,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that the trial court erred in giving the instruction based on language in State v. Kohlasch, 11 Or App 459, 502 P2d 1158 (1972). Because I do not find the error to have been harmless, I dissent.
The trial court gave the general instruction covering driving under the influence of intoxicants. It also instructed the jury that, if it found that defendant had a blood alcohol level of .10 percent or more, “this constitutes being under the influence of intoxicating liquor.” It followed that instruction with the one challenged in this appeal:
“If you find from the evidence that the chemical analysis of the defendant’s breath obtained within a reasonable time after his arrest shows that the blood alcohol content was at a certain level, you may infer that the defendant’s blood alcohol content was not less than that at the time of driving and arrest.”
*437The jury was given alternative bases on which they could find defendant guilty — that his ability to drive had been affected perceptibly by his consumption of alcohol or that he drove with a blood alcohol level of .10 percent or higher. The latter basis was flawed by the improper instruction to the effect that the jury was to assume that defendant’s blood alcohol was the same or higher at the time he was driving as it was the time the breath test was taken. We cannot tell which of the alternatives, or combination of them, the jury used. Because one of them was impermissibly flawed by the erroneous instruction, it cannot have been harmless.
The last paragraph of the majority opinion sets up a strawman that bears little resemblance to my dissenting position and then flails it with pejorative terms. The giving of the flawed instruction constituted reversible error, not because the jury must have based its verdict on it, but because it could have, and we cannot tell from the record that it did not. That is the reality that requires reversal.
I would reverse and remand for a new trial and, therefore, I dissent.