Jones v. State

761 So. 2d 907, 2000 WL 366394
Court of Appeals of Mississippi·Decided April 11, 2000·No. 1998-KA-01102-COA·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

761 So.2d 907 (2000)

Danny T. JONES, Appellant,
v.
STATE of Mississippi, Appellee.

No. 1998-KA-01102-COA.

Court of Appeals of Mississippi.

April 11, 2000.
Rehearing Denied June 6, 2000.

*908 Jeanine M. Carafello, Jackson, Attorney for Appellant.

Office of the Attorney General by John R. Henry Jr., Attorney for Appellee.

BEFORE McMILLIN, C.J., BRIDGES, AND PAYNE, JJ.

McMILLIN, C.J., for the Court:

¶ 1. Danny Jones, while driving a vehicle in Smith County, struck and killed Ondean McAlpin. After evidence was developed that Jones was under the influence of a narcotic drug at the time of the incident, he was indicted and convicted of DUI manslaughter in McAlpin's death. He has appealed that conviction to this Court, asserting two issues that he claims warrant a reversal of his conviction.

¶ 2. The first issue raised by Jones is that the trial court erred in refusing to suppress the results of chemical analysis of *909 a blood sample extracted shortly after the accident. In actuality, this matter requires consideration of three separate legal issues. Jones claims that his due process rights were violated when a portion of the sample not needed for the testing was destroyed, thereby depriving him of the opportunity to have an independent chemical analysis of his blood. Secondly, he urges that the sample was drawn in a manner contrary to that dictated by the statute regarding such matters. Finally, he suggests that the State could not demonstrate the necessary chain of custody to show with sufficient certainty that the lab results introduced into evidence were derived from blood obtained from him.

¶ 3. As his second issue, Jones argues that an investigating officer was permitted to offer testimony in the nature of accident reconstruction without being qualified as an expert in that field.

¶ 4. We find the issues raised by Jones do not constitute reversible error. Therefore, we affirm his conviction.

I.

Facts

¶ 5. Jones struck McAlpin while she was using a riding mower to cut the grass in her front yard. The State contended that Jones struck her while she was in her yard, while Jones asserted that McAlpin had unexpectedly driven into the highway right-of-way, thereby making the accident unavoidable. Jones was also injured in the accident and was taken to Magee General Hospital for treatment. Because Jones had been exhibiting signs of chemical impairment in the aftermath of the accident, officers became suspicious that he may have been under the influence of intoxicants or some narcotic substance. For that reason an intern at the hospital drew a blood sample from Jones for testing, though the intern was unable to recall at trial who had directed her to draw and retain the sample.

¶ 6. The blood was tested at the State Crime Laboratory and was discovered to contain the drug Butalbital, which is a prescription medication that acts as a sedative and is a barbiturate. The crime lab, although able to detect the presence of the drug, lacked the facilities to measure the level of the dosage. As a result, the remainder of the sample was sent to a private testing facility for further analysis. An official from the private laboratory testified at trial that those additional tests revealed a dosage level of fourteen micrograms of Butalbital per milliliter of blood, which was a near-lethal amount of the drug. The State's theory was that, even though Jones had a prescription for the drug, he had purposely overmedicated himself to the extent that his ability to operate a motor vehicle was substantially impaired, thereby making him answerable criminally for McAlpin's death.

II.

Destruction of the Remainder of Blood Sample

¶ 7. The private laboratory that performed the dosage level testing on Jones's blood had a standing policy that, in the absence of a directive to the contrary, the unused residue of a testing sample would be destroyed after six weeks. Under that policy, the remainder of Jones's blood sample was destroyed before he was indicted. He now claims that the State's failure to take the steps necessary to preserve the sample residue in order to afford him the opportunity to have his own independent tests run denied him his due process right to a fundamentally fair trial.

¶ 8. The intentional destruction of evidence by the State has been held to raise constitutional issues of due process if that evidence could reasonably be seen as playing a significant role in a suspect's defense. California v. Trombetta, 467 U.S. 479, 488, 104 S.Ct. 2528, 81 L.Ed.2d 413 (1984); Tolbert v. State, 511 So.2d 1368, 1372 (Miss.1987). In this case, there is no doubt that the level of narcotic in Jones's *910 blood was a significant issue at trial; however, the only purpose additional testing could have served would have been to uncover possible defects in the testing procedures used by the private laboratory. In California v. Trombetta, the United States Supreme Court found it constitutionally unobjectionable that California authorities had failed to preserve a breath sample from the defendant after testing him on an intoxilyzer, though it was technically feasible to preserve such a sample. Trombetta, 467 U.S. at 485-88, 104 S.Ct. 2528. In that case, the Supreme Court said that, in order to raise constitutional concerns, the unavailable evidence must have had some demonstrable exculpatory value that was evident prior to destruction and also had to be evidence of such a nature that it was not obtainable by some other reasonable means. Id. at 489, 104 S.Ct. 2528. The court concluded that it was merely speculative that additional tests would impeach the test results already obtained, so that the breath samples could not pass the "exculpatory value" test. Id. As to the second prong of the test, the court noted that there were other means beside retesting the sample to attack the probative value of a laboratory test results, including an attack on the general proficiency and competence of the laboratory. Id. at 490, 104 S.Ct. 2528.

¶ 9. The Mississippi Supreme Court has held that merely holding out the possibility that further testing would call the earlier test results into doubt is not enough to meet the standard announced in Trombetta. Taylor v. State, 672 So.2d 1246, 1271 (Miss.1996).

¶ 10. In the absence of any indication that the laboratory results obtained by the State from the private testing laboratory were, for some reason, untrustworthy, we do not find that the routine destruction of the remaining blood sample invoked constitutional due process concerns that would require the test results to be excluded.

III.

The Procedure for Drawing the Sample

¶ 11. Jones claims that the results of the testing were inadmissible because the blood sample was not drawn in accordance with the statutory procedure set out in Section 63-11-8 of the Mississippi Code as it was in effect at the time of the accident. The statute at that time required that a blood sample be drawn only if the treating physician permitted it and listed several alternate persons authorized to draw the sample, including clinical laboratory technician. Miss.Code Ann. § 63-11-8(1) (1995), revised 1996.

¶ 12.

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