Court Opinion

ID: 9655441
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:10:49.317229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:18.563696
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(concurring). I concur in the majority’s holding that the defendant’s right to due process was not violated when the state consumed all of the blood sample for its own testing. The defendant presented no evidence that a blood sample can be tested accurately for blood alcohol content after the passage of time.
I do not, however, read sec. 971.23(4) and (5), Stats. 1979-80, as narrowly as does the majority. I agree with the majority that this statute requires the state to preserve the physical evidence which the state intends to introduce in evidence at trial or which it intends to introduce at trial for scientific analysis. Slip op. p. 478, swpra, and note 6. But the majority apparently concludes that the state has no duty to preserve a blood sample (or the portion which has not been subject to analysis) under sec. 971.23(4) and (5), since it is the scientific analysis and not the blood itself which is being introduced in evidence *482at trial. I read sec. 971.23 (4) and (5) as placing a duty on the state to preserve, whenever it can reasonably do so, the physical evidence it has subjected to scientific analysis (or any part of it which has not been consumed in the analysis) when it intends to introduce either the physical evidence or the test result in evidence at trial.