State v. Moody

116 P.3d 935, 201 Or. App. 58, 2005 Ore. App. LEXIS 974
CourtCourt of Appeals of Oregon
DecidedAugust 3, 2005
Docket00FE0012; A116566
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 116 P.3d 935 (State v. Moody) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Oregon primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Moody, 116 P.3d 935, 201 Or. App. 58, 2005 Ore. App. LEXIS 974 (Or. Ct. App. 2005).

Opinion

WOLLHEIM, P. J.

Defendant appeals from judgments of conviction for assault in the third degree, ORS 163.165, driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII), ORS 813.010, recklessly endangering another person, ORS 163.195, and reckless driving, ORS 811.140. Defendant raises three assignments of error: (1) the trial court erred in denying his motion for a judgment of acquittal; (2) the trial court erred in denying his motion in limine to exclude evidence of his urinalysis; and (3) the trial court erred in imposing a departure sentence. We vacate defendant’s sentences and remand for resentencing, but otherwise affirm.

Defendant was involved in a two-car motor vehicle accident that seriously injured the victim. Before trial, defendant filed a motion in limine to exclude the results of his urinalysis, arguing that there was no correlation between the presence of controlled substances in his urine and his level of impairment at the time of the accident. At best, defendant argued, the urinalysis showed that he had used methamphetamine and marijuana at some time before the accident. Therefore, according to defendant, because of the minimal probative value and high potential for prejudice, the urinalysis evidence should be excluded pursuant to OEC 403. The state argued that the legislature, by enacting ORS 813.131, had deemed urinalysis evidence to be admissible and that the results were relevant to defendant’s “state of mind and his actions and his physical condition at the time he was driving, and they are admissible.” The trial court agreed with the state and denied defendant’s motion.

Before a bench trial, defendant renewed his motion in limine based on State v. Jayne, 173 Or App 533, 24 P3d 920 (2001). According to defendant, Jayne precluded the admission of urinalysis evidence under OEC 403 because that evidence could not be used to establish the defendant’s level of impairment at the time of driving. The trial court distinguished Jayne on the facts, determining that the urine sample in Jayne had not been subjected to a quantitative analysis, id. at 544, and defendant’s urine sample here had been quantitatively analyzed. However, the trial court reserved ruling on the motion for reconsideration until after the state [61]*61had presented its entire case. The motion was ultimately denied.

Defendant also filed a motion for a judgment of acquittal after the conclusion of the state’s case. The trial court denied defendant’s motion in regard to the DUII count, because “there’s enough evidence that a reasonable trier of fact could find that [defendant] was under the influence of a controlled substance,” and also denied it in regard to the counts of recklessly endangering another person and reckless driving. The trial court did, however, grant defendant’s motion as to the count of assault in the second degree, instead allowing the state to proceed on the lesser-included offense of assault in the third degree.

Defendant was ultimately convicted of assault in the third degree, DUII, recklessly endangering another person, and reckless driving. Defendant appeals from those judgments of conviction.

We begin with defendant’s second assignment of error, the denial of his motion in limine to exclude the results of his urinalysis under OEC 403. Defendant relies, as he did before the trial court, on our decision in Jayne. The state responds that Jayne is distinguishable, that OEC 403 does not apply because this was a bench trial, and that, in any event, the record shows that the trial court recognized the limited value of the urinalysis evidence in its decision. We review the admissibility of the urinalysis evidence for errors of law, Jayne, 173 Or App at 540, and conclude that the trial court did not err in admitting the evidence.

In Jayne, we affirmed a trial court order granting the defendant’s motion in limine to exclude the results of her urinalysis. The defendant was charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter, DUII, and failure to perform the duties of a driver. 173 Or App at 535. A qualitative urinalysis was performed, but no quantitative testing was done. Id. at 536. Meneely, a forensic scientist from the testing lab, testified that, although the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) guidelines and ORS 813.131 (1997)1 require quantitative testing to be done, no such testing was performed [62]*62because quantitative test results still could not correlate to the defendant’s level of impairment. Meneely also testified that, had a quantitative test been performed, the results may have come back negative because the amount of methamphetamine or marijuana metabolite present in the defendant’s mine did not meet the NIDA quantification standards. Id. Dr. Grimsbo, the defendant’s expert witness, testified that all labs follow NIDA standards and that a urinalysis performed without quantification could not “be described as a positive test.” Id. at 537.

As to the DUII count, we held that the urinalysis evidence was not relevant and therefore was properly excluded because the defendant was not charged with a controlled substances DUII pursuant to ORS 813.010(2).* 2Id. at 539. Therefore, we did not address the relevance of urinalysis evidence, quantified or not, with respect to a charge of a controlled substances DUII. We next addressed the admissibility of the urinalysis as scientific evidence with respect to the charges of manslaughter and failure to perform the duties of a driver. We first determined the evidence to be relevant under OEC 401. Id. at 540. We then determined, in light of the testimony presented, that the evidence was “not generally accepted in the field of urinalysis testing and also tends to demonstrate that the Lab’s practice has a greater rate of error than does screening testing followed by confirmatory quantitative testing[,]” and that the weakness of the foundation laid directly affected the probative value of the evidence. Id. at 542-433 [63]*63(emphasis in original). After considering the potential prejudice of the evidence due to its inability to correlate to the defendant’s impairment at the time of the accident and “the significant weight that a jury is likely to accord this type of evidence,” we concluded that the trial court did not err in excluding the evidence. Id. at 544-45.

Although defendant’s reliance on Jayne is understandable, here, we have a different situation. First, unlike in Jayne, the urinalysis evidence at issue here was quantitatively analyzed.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
116 P.3d 935, 201 Or. App. 58, 2005 Ore. App. LEXIS 974, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-moody-orctapp-2005.