Campbell v. People

443 P.3d 72
CourtSupreme Court of Colorado
DecidedJune 24, 2019
DocketSupreme Court Case No. 16SC267
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 443 P.3d 72 (Campbell v. People) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Colorado primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Campbell v. People, 443 P.3d 72 (Colo. 2019).

Opinion

JUSTICE GABRIEL delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶1 This case requires us to decide whether the trial court abused its discretion in permitting a police officer to testify regarding the results of a Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus ("HGN") test without first qualifying that officer as an expert witness under CRE 702 and Venalonzo v. People , 2017 CO 9, 388 P.3d 868.1

¶2 We conclude that, on the facts of this case, the officer's testimony concerning the HGN test was expert testimony under CRE 702 and that the district court therefore erred in holding otherwise. We further conclude, however, that on the facts presented here, the court's error in admitting the testimony was harmless.

¶3 Accordingly, we affirm the district court's judgment.

I. Facts and Procedural History

¶4 One evening at around midnight, a police officer was on patrol when he noticed a truck drive past him with only one headlight on. Because of that, the officer pulled the truck over and initiated a discussion with the driver, Randy Campbell. The only other person in the car was a friend of Campbell's, who was intoxicated and sitting in the front passenger seat.

¶5 In speaking with Campbell, the officer detected a moderate odor of alcohol on Campbell's breath and noted that his eyes were bloodshot and his speech was slightly slurred. In addition, when the officer asked to see Campbell's identification and Campbell tried to remove it from his wallet, he dropped the wallet on the floor, although he was eventually able to retrieve the identification for the officer.

¶6 Based on these observations, the officer asked Campbell if he had been drinking. Campbell initially responded that he had not had any alcohol that evening, but after the *74officer said that he could smell alcohol on Campbell, Campbell responded that he had had one beer at approximately 2:30 p.m. that afternoon. The officer then requested that Campbell perform a series of voluntary roadside sobriety maneuvers, and Campbell agreed to do so. According to the officer, when Campbell attempted to get out of the truck, he unsuccessfully reached for the door handle twice before finally grabbing it.

¶7 The officer proceeded to administer three roadside sobriety maneuvers, namely, the HGN test, the "walk and turn," and the "one-leg stand," all of which the officer had been trained on and was certified to administer. After determining that Campbell had failed to perform all three of the maneuvers as a sober person would, and based on the officer's observations of Campbell and on Campbell's admission that he had been drinking, the officer arrested him.

¶8 Following the arrest, the officer noticed three small bottles of alcohol-one opened and two unopened-on the floor of Campbell's truck. In addition, with Campbell's consent, the officer administered two breath tests to determine Campbell's blood alcohol content ("BAC"). These tests showed that Campbell had a BAC of 0.07 and 0.086, respectively, which allowed a permissible inference that Campbell was, at a minimum, impaired by the consumption of alcohol. See § 42-4-1301(6)(a)(II)-(III), C.R.S. (2018).

¶9 The prosecution subsequently charged Campbell with driving under the influence ("DUI"), driving while ability impaired ("DWAI"), operating a vehicle with a defective headlamp, and possessing an open alcohol container. Campbell pleaded not guilty and demanded a jury trial.

¶10 The case proceeded, and during pretrial proceedings, Campbell noted that the prosecution intended to have the officer who conducted the roadside maneuvers on him testify as a lay witness. Campbell argued that such maneuvers comprised "a specialized area of knowledge" and therefore the officer should only be permitted to testify about his observations and should not be allowed to offer "any opinions that stem from those observations that are based on this specialized knowledge that the officer had."

¶11 The court responded that it was working in a bit of a vacuum because it did not know what the officer's testimony would be. The court observed that there could be testimony on roadsides that would require expert opinion but that general testimony by an officer that he was trained to do the test in a certain way, that he did so, and that people who are intoxicated look a certain way while people who are sober look a different way was not scientific testimony necessitating any expert designation. The court then stated that it was not making a finding one way or another but that it would consider an objection at the appropriate time. The case then proceeded to trial.

¶12 At trial, the prosecution called the officer as a witness, and the officer testified at length about his training and experience regarding the roadside maneuvers that he had conducted on Campbell and regarding the maneuvers themselves. In particular, with respect to his qualifications, the officer testified that (1) he was "certified in the standard field sobriety roadside maneuvers and DUI detection"; (2) to obtain this certification, he had taken an initial course at the police academy, which he stated may have been forty hours in length (although he was unsure of that); and (3) he was subsequently recertified every other year through a sixteen-hour course. In addition, he estimated that he had performed approximately seven hundred DUI investigations during his then-fifteen-years of service as a police officer, and he explained that in his training, he had gone through what officers called the "wet lab." In the wet lab, trainees administered the standardized maneuvers on test subjects to see if the subjects could perform the maneuvers as a sober person would. The officer confirmed that at the time he conducted the voluntary roadside maneuvers on Campbell, he was certified to administer them.

¶13 The officer then testified that he typically conducted three different sobriety maneuvers on someone whom the officer suspected was driving under the influence and that he did so in this case. With respect to the HGN test in particular, the officer explained that "you're looking for a total of six *75clues, three separate clues in each eye." He then described these clues in detail:

During the initial part of it ..., what you do is you hold a stimulus, which is my finger approximately 12 inches from the individual's nose. You then instruct them to follow that stimulus with their eyes, and their eyes only[,] keeping their head perfectly still. As you move it or start the maneuver you start with the left side of the body and what you're initially looking for is equal tracking in the individual's eyes. ... The other thing that you're looking for is the pupil size. ... The next clue or when you start into the clues is lack of smooth pursuit. And what you're looking for is[,] as the eyes are following the stimulus[,] whether or not the eye is stopping or if it's following the stimulus smoothly as it passes in front of their face.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Peo v. McKain
Colorado Court of Appeals, 2025
v. Johnson
2021 CO 35 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2021)
The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado v. Elmo Jesse JOHNSON
486 P.3d 1154 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2021)
v. People
2020 CO 71 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2020)
Maria Reservoir Co. v. Warner
2020 CO 27 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2020)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
443 P.3d 72, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/campbell-v-people-colo-2019.