Mullins v. State

646 N.E.2d 40, 1995 Ind. LEXIS 8, 1995 WL 3414
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 4, 1995
Docket49S02-9501-CR-1
StatusPublished
Cited by50 cases

This text of 646 N.E.2d 40 (Mullins v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mullins v. State, 646 N.E.2d 40, 1995 Ind. LEXIS 8, 1995 WL 3414 (Ind. 1995).

Opinion

ON PETITION TO TRANSFER

SULLIVAN, Justice.

This case comes to us on the State's petition to transfer the decision of the Court of Appeals in Mullins v. State (1994), Ind.App., 629 N.E.2d 886, disapproved by Baran v. State (1994), Ind., 689 N.E.2d 642, 647 n. 8, reh'g pending. Ind.Appellate Rule 11(B). The Court of Appeals reversed Mullins's conviction for operating a vehicle with at least ten-hundredths percent (0.10%) by weight of alcohol in his blood. It reversed the conviction because, it concluded, the printout from the breath-analysis machine that the State offered to prove the amount of alcohol in Mullins's blood at the time he was arrested did not indicate any units of measurement. Mullins, 629 N.E.2d at 887. Consequently, the Court of Appeals opined, the evidence was insufficient to sustain Mulling's convietion. For the reasons given in our opinion in Baran v. State, we grant transfer.

Facts

After a bench trial on August 7, 1992, Michael Mullins was acquitted of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, 1 but he was conviet-ed of operating a vehicle with at least ten-hundredth's percent (0.10%) by weight of alcohol in his blood, a Class C misdemeanor. 2

The facts most favorable to the verdict show that on January 20, 1992, at approxi *42 mately 11:80 pm., Mullins and two female friends were drinking at a bar not far from the intersection of Rockville Road and Interstate 465. At approximately 2:00 a.m. in the morning of January 21, Indiana State Police Trooper Jeffrey Hearon saw a black Datsun that was weaving and travelling slower than the traffic flow on southbound I-465 near Rockville Road.

Trooper Hearon stopped the Datsun and asked Mullins, the driver, for his driver's license and registration. Trooper Hearon noticed that Mullins's eyes were red and glassy, that there was an odor of aleohol on his breath, and that his speech was slurred. Trooper Hearon asked Mullins if he had been drinking, to which Mullins replied that he had had a few beers.

Trooper Hearon gave Mullins an Alco-Sensor test, arrested him, and took him to the Speedway police department. At the Speedway police station, Trooper Hearon gave Mullins a field sobriety test followed by a breath test. The breath-analysis machine, a BAC Datamaster with a keyboard, printed out the results on an "evidence ticket." The printout read as follows:

BAC Datamaster
Evidence Ticket
JANUARY 21, 1992
[[Image here]]
-BREATH ANALYSIS-
BLANK TEST 00 02:38
INTERNAL STANDARD VERIFIED - 02:38
SUBJECT SAMPLE 20 02:39
BLANK TEST 00 02:40

Including the issue that the Court of Appeals decided in his favor, Mullins raises four issues for us to decide. 3 We state those issues as:

I. Whether the numbers on the "evidence ticket" were sufficient evidence that the amount of alcohol in Mullins's blood was greater than ten-hundredths percent by weight.
II. Whether the State laid a sufficient foundation demonstrating what the approved procedures for administering a breath test were and that Trooper Hearon followed those procedures.
Whether the breath-test machine used to test Mullins was properly certified. IIL.
IV. Whether the State laid a sufficient foundation showing that the breath-test machine used to test Mullins was working properly.

Mullins raises three issues that the Court of Appeals did not reach. These issues all involve the statutes governing the admission of breath-test results. Because the interaction of the statutory framework is complex, for ease of reference we now set out the statutes involved in a footnote before addressing each of Mullins's arguments in turn. 4

*43 I. Whether the numbers on the "evidence ticket" are sufficient evidence that the amount of alcohol in Mullins's blood was greater than ten-hundredths percent by weight.

Indiana Code Ann. § 9-80-5-1(@) (Burns 1991) provides that "[a] person who operates a vehicle with at least ten-hundredths percent (0.10%) by weight of alcohol in the person's blood commits a Class C misdemeanor." - Mullins contends that the "evidence ticket" does not express the test results as a percentage, by weight, of alcohol in the blood, and that therefore the "evidence ticket" is insufficient to establish one of the elements of the offense. We disposed of this argument in Baran when we said:

Pursuant to Indiana Administrative Code tit. 260, r. 1.1-2-1(e)(2), breath test equipment is tested for accuracy using a known ethanol-water or ethanol-gas solution, measured as a percentage of weight by volume. Thus, in order to be properly certified by the Department of Toxicology, the machines must measure blood alcohol content as a percentage of alcohol by weight in the blood.
Courts are permitted to take judicial notice of Indiana law. Hernandes v. State (1982), Ind., 439 N.E.2d 625, 631. In fact, courts are required to take judicial notice of the regulations concerning breath testing. Ind.Code § 4-22-9-3; Hatch, [ (1989) ] 547 N.E.2d [276] at 277. Judicial notice relieves the party having the burden of establishing a particular fact from submitting formal proof of that fact. Hutchinson v. State (1985), Ind., 477 N.E.2d 850, 854.
[[Image here]]
[Blecause the breath test equipment must measure blood alcohol content as a percentage of alcohol by weight in the blood in order to be properly certified by the Department of Toxicology, the trial court was entitled to take judicial notice of the fact that the Intoxilyzer 5000 machine printout expresses the test result as a *44 percentage of alcohol by weight in the blood.

Baran, 639 N.E.2d at 647-48 (some citations omitted) (footnotes omitted) (emphasis in the original). The trial court was here, as in Baran, entitled to take judicial notice that the BAC Datamaster printout expressed the test result as a percentage of alcohol by weight in the blood. The evidence was therefore sufficient to establish that the percentage by weight of alcohol in Mullins's blood was greater than ten hundredths percent (0.10%).

II. Whether the State laid a sufficient foundation demonstrating what the approved procedures for administering a breath test were and that Trooper Hearon followed those procedures.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
646 N.E.2d 40, 1995 Ind. LEXIS 8, 1995 WL 3414, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mullins-v-state-ind-1995.