Karl Frederick Schultz v. State

457 S.W.3d 94, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 12566, 2014 WL 6601641
Court of Appeals of Texas·Decided November 20, 2014·No. 01-13-00505-CR·Published·Cited by 7 cases

Opinions

OPINION

LAURA CARTER HIGLEY, Justice.

Appellant, Karl Frederick Schultz, was charged by indictment with driving while intoxicated.1 Appellant moved to suppress the results of his breath test, and the trial court denied the motion. Appellant then pleaded guilty to the offense, subject to his right to appeal the ruling on the motion to suppress. The trial court found appellant guilty and assessed punishment at confinement for one year. The trial court then suspended the sentence and placed Appellant on community supervision. On appeal, Appellant argues in three issues that (1) the trial court abused its discretion by excluding certain evidence from the suppression hearing, (2) the breath test results should have been suppressed because they were obtained in violation of the law, and (3) the breath test results should have been suppressed because they were not reliable.

We affirm.

Background

Appellant was arrested in the early morning hours of January 7, 2012 for driving while intoxicated. Appellant stipulated at the suppression hearing that reasonable suspicion existed for a detention, that probable cause justified his arrest, and that the required statutory warnings were properly given to him. The arresting officers took Appellant to a nearby gas station. Parked at the gas station was a [97] Houston Police Department Breath Alcohol Testing van. Appellant agreed to give a breath test.

Officer D. Ciers testified at the suppression hearing. He testified that he brought appellant into the van and closed the door. It was a cool morning — about 72 degrees Fahrenheit inside the van — and the air conditioner was not running in the van. Officer Ciers observed Appellant for a 15-minute period and then conducted the breath test using a machine mounted inside the van called the Intoxilyzer 5000.

Ronald Oliver, a technical supervisor for the Texas Department of Public Safety, also testified at the suppression hearing. Part of Oliver’s responsibilities as a technical supervisor was to regularly inspect and calibrate the breath test machines. Oliver testified that the breath test machine used on Appellant was inspected about one week before Appellant’s test. He also testified that Appellant’s test was the first one after the inspection. When questioned about whether the inspections on the machines were valid when the machines were used in a mobile van, Oliver testified,

A testing site is a testing site. Whether it has wheels or not doesn’t make any difference. If the testing site is appropriate, then you can get good, valid alcohol results from that instrument. If .it’s in a bad location, whether it have wheels or not have wheels; that we have testing sites in jails that overheat and there are times when we can’t run tests, then that physical location is it’s just too hot or too cold.

Oliver also testified about the approval of the Houston Police Department’s breath testing program by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s scientific director. Specifically, Oliver testified,

Q. And is [the Intoxilyzer 5000 that was used on Appellant] certified by the scientific director of the Texas Department of Public Safety?
A. Yes.
Q. And was it certified on the date of January 7th, 2012?
A. That is correct.
Q. And is that instrument used as a part of the breath test program?
A. That is correct.
Q. Are you responsible for the maintenance of that instrument?
A. I was, yes.

Finally, Oliver testified at trial about the Intoxilyzer 5000’s many failsafes for inaccurate breath tests. The machine tests for the presence of alcohol, specifically ethanol. Ethanol absorbs a specific wavelength of infrared light. When that wavelength of light is passed through the air chamber, less of the light will come out the other side of the chamber due to its absorption by the ethanol. A measure of the decrease in the amount of the infrared light establishes the amount of ethanol present in the sample.

Other known chemicals can also absorb infrared light at the same wavelength. These are called interferents and can potentially cause a false identification of ethanol. To account for this, the machine also tests for five known interferents, such as acetone. If any interferents are detected, the machine subtracts the amount of inter-ferents detected from the total amount detected for the test wavelength.

Every time the machine is run, it performs a test of its internal components to ensure that the circuitry is functioning properly. If it is not functioning properly, the test ends and the report explains an error occurred.

Next, it purges the system of the air in it at the time, drawing in air from its current environment. The machine then tests that air sample. The test subject [98] then breathes into a tube connected to the machine. The machine tests that breath sample as well. It then performs another test from the current environment. After that, the machine then tests what is known as a reference sample. The reference sample is designed to produce a result for a specific volume of alcohol. The test subject then breathes again in the tube, and the machine tests that sample as well. Another sample of the air in the current environment is tested. Finally, the machine draws another sample in from the environment and tests it again.

After the tests are complete, the machine prints out a report showing the results for each test. If any errors occur during the testing, the report explains an error occurred and does not include the testing results. Potential errors include improperly functioning circuitry, overheating, being overly cold, interferents being detected in the ambient air samples, and the two breath samples from the test subject being too far apart.

In the present case, the report did not identify any errors. It identified the alcohol concentration for the first air sample at 0.000. It identified the alcohol concentration for Appellant’s first breath sample at 0.158.2 It identified the alcohol concentration for the second air sample at 0.000. The reference sample .was predicted to identify an alcohol concentration of 0.080. The machine identified the alcohol concentration for the reference sample at 0.077. It identified the alcohol concentration for the third air sample at 0.000. It identified the alcohol concentration for Appellant’s second breath sample at 0.168. Finally, it identified the alcohol concentration for the fourth air sample at 0.000.

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Karl Frederick Schultz v. State, 457 S.W.3d 94, 2014 Tex. App. LEXIS 12566, 2014 WL 6601641 (Tex. Ct. App. 2014).

457 S.W.3d 94 (Karl Frederick Schultz v. State) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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