Municipality of Anchorage v. Ray

854 P.2d 740, 1993 Alas. App. LEXIS 26, 1993 WL 210905
CourtCourt of Appeals of Alaska
DecidedJune 18, 1993
DocketA-4067
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 854 P.2d 740 (Municipality of Anchorage v. Ray) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Alaska primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Municipality of Anchorage v. Ray, 854 P.2d 740, 1993 Alas. App. LEXIS 26, 1993 WL 210905 (Ala. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

OPINION

MANNHEIMER, Judge.

On February 9, 1991, Jeffrey L. Ray was involved in a motor vehicle accident in which a pedestrian was injured. When the police arrived, they asked Ray if he would be willing to have his blood drawn and tested for alcohol content; Ray refused. The police then took Ray into custody, *743 transported him to a hospital, and had medical personnel draw a sample of his blood without his consent. When Ray’s blood was tested, it was found to contain .133 percent alcohol, over the legal limit.

Ray was charged with driving while intoxicated under the Anchorage Municipal Code, § 9.28.020. In a pre-trial motion, Ray asked the district court to suppress the results of the blood test. Ray argued that the police were obligated to ask him to submit to a breath test first, and were empowered to draw his blood only if he refused the breath test. The district court agreed with Ray and suppressed the blood test results. We granted the Municipality’s petition to review the district court’s ruling. We now reverse the decision of the district court.

In deciding Ray’s case, we will be interpreting a trio of state statutes: AS 28.35.031(a), AS 28.35.032(a), and AS 28.35.-035. At first blush, this may seem incongruous, since Ray was prosecuted under the Anchorage Municipal Code, not Title 28 of the Alaska statutes. The parties apparently litigated this case in district court on the basis of the state statutes; in fact, the appellate brief filed by the Municipality of Anchorage does not even mention the Anchorage Municipal Code. Ray’s brief recognizes the distinction between state law and municipal law; nevertheless, he urges this court to treat the municipal ordinances as equivalent to the corresponding state statutes. We do so for two reasons. First, as Ray notes, the ordinances — AMC 9.28.-021, AMC 9.28.022(A), and AMC 9.28.025— are quite similar to the three state statutes, although there are some differences in wording. Second, state law prohibits municipalities from promulgating traffic laws that diverge from state law. AS 28.01.-010(a). Thus, we -presume that the drafters of the municipal ordinances intended that the ordinances be interpreted in the same manner as the corresponding statutes.

Construction of AS 28.35.035(a)

Alaska has enacted an “implied consent” law, AS 28.35.031(a), which declares that anyone who drives a motor vehicle in the state has impliedly consented to have the police administer a breath test to determine the motorist’s blood alcohol content if the motorist has been lawfully arrested for an offense committed while the motorist was driving while intoxicated. However, the authority granted to the police by this statute is conditioned by a sibling statute, AS 28.35.032(a). In 1979, that statute read:

If a person under arrest refuses the request of a law enforcement officer to submit to a chemical test of his breath as provided in [AS 28.35.031(a) ], ... a chemical test shall not be given.

(Quoted in Anchorage v. Geber, 592 P.2d 1187, 1190 (Alaska 1979)) In Geber, the Alaska Supreme Court held that if the arrested motorist refused to submit to a breath test, the police could not make the motorist submit to a blood test or any other chemical test. After exhaustively reviewing the legislative history of the 1979 versions of AS 28.35.031 and .032, the court concluded that the language ■ “a chemical test shall not be given” was intended by the legislature to mean that no chemical test of any kind was to be given. Id. at 1191. Under Geber, if an arrested motorist declined to submit to the breath test mandated'in section 031(a), that was the end of the matter.

Moreover, the Geber court interpreted AS 28.35.032(a) to bar the police from administering any chemical test other than a breath test, regardless of whether the motorist had affirmatively refused to take the breath test. The issue arose because one of the co-appellants in Geber had not refused to take a breath test until after the police had already drawn a blood sample from her. The court said:

Further comment is perhaps necessary concerning the taking of blood from [the appellant] Willis, since her refusal to take a [breath test] came after the blood sample was extracted from her body. In our view, the fact that she had not yet refused a breath test is of no' significance. As we interpret the Implied Consent Statute [AS 28.35.031-032], it was intended to provide an exclusive method *744 for obtaining direct evidence of a suspect’s blood alcohol content, absent his or her express consent to the use of some other form of testing.

Geber, 592 P.2d at 1192 (emphasis in the original).

Responding to the Geber decision, the legislature amended AS 28.35.032(a) and enacted AS 28.35.035. Section 032(a) now reads:

If a person under arrest refuses the request of a law enforcement officer to submit to a chemical test under ... AS 28.35.031(a), ... a chemical test may not be given, except as provided by AS 28.-35.035.

As 28.35.035(a) provides an exception for intoxicated drivers who have injured or killed someone else:

If a person is under arrest for an offense arising out of acts alleged to have been committed while the person was operating a motor vehicle ... while intoxicated, and that arrest results from an accident that causes death or physical injury to another person, a chemical test may be administered without the consent of the person arrested to determine the amount of alcohol in that person’s breath or blood.

This brings us to the issue presented by Ray’s case. The Municipality asserts that AS 28.35.035(a) authorizes the police to test an arrested motorist’s blood whenever a motor vehicle accident has occurred and someone other than the motorist has been injured in the accident. According to the Municipality, the blood test can be conducted despite the motorist’s protest and without regard to whether the motorist has refused a breath test. Ray, on the other hand, asserts that section 035(a) requires the police to first seek the motorist’s consent to a breath test, and only if the motorist refuses to submit to a breath test can the police conduct the more intrusive blood test.

Section 035(a) does not specify any requirement that an arrested motorist be offered a breath test first. Moreover, the concluding language of section 035(a) appears to support the Municipality’s position: when an arrested motorist’s drunk driving has caused injury or death, “a chemical test may be administered without the consent of the person arrested to determine the amount of alcohol in that person’s breath or blood.” However, Ray argues that these words should not be taken at face value.

Ray points out that in Bass v. Anchorage, 692 P.2d 961, 964-65 (Alaska App.

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Bluebook (online)
854 P.2d 740, 1993 Alas. App. LEXIS 26, 1993 WL 210905, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/municipality-of-anchorage-v-ray-alaskactapp-1993.