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State v. Becker10/6/1999
ver that her privilege to drive on Georgia highways would be suspended for one year if she refused to take chemical tests. After she refused, he incorrectly told her that her refusal would result in immediate suspension of her license for one year. The trial court denied her motion to suppress and admitted evidence of her refusal. We held that the officer's misstatement of the law was harmless because it did not coerce the driver, who had already refused the testing, to consent. Thus, the trial court properly denied the motion to suppress.
Here, as in Rojas, the omission of information from the notice given to Becker - if indeed it was error - was harmless. After hearing that refusal to consent to chemical testing could be used against him in court and would result in suspension of his commercial driver's license for one year, Becker agreed to take the tests. For him, those consequences alone were apparently severe enough to justify consenting. Being told that refusal to consent would result in an additional harsh consequence - suspension of personal driving privileges - could only have tipped the balance further in favor of consenting. The omission was therefore immaterial.
Moreover, there is no indication that Rehberg intentionally misled Becker. As we recognized in Sorrow v. State,
his is not a case where the state has subtly coerced [Becker] into choosing the option it had no right to compel, rather than offering a true choice. To the contrary, the State wants [Becker] to choose to take the test, for the inference of intoxication arising from a positive [chemical] test is far stronger than that arising from a refusal to take the test.
Rehberg had every incentive to explain fully the consequences of refusing to consent and no reason to minimize them. Thus, suppression of the test results in this case cannot be justified as a punitive measure for overzealous law enforcement.
Under the circumstances, Rehberg's failure to tell Becker that his personal driving privileges would be suspended if he did not consent was not a valid basis for suppressing the test results.
3. Because the record is insufficient to support the trial court's first basis for suppression and the second basis is legally incorrect, we remand this case for a redetermination of the motion to suppress. On remand, the trial court may, of course, consider the bases for suppression that it previously reserved ruling upon.
Judgment reversed and case remanded. McMurray, P. J., and Andrews, P. J., concur.
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