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County of Jefferson v. Renz12/22/1999
superfluous. State ex rel. Reimann v. Circuit Court for Dane County, 214 Wis. 2d 605, 619, 571 N.W.2d 385 (1997); Lake City, 207 Wis. 2d at 162. The petitioner argues that, reading the first sentence in context with the rest of the statute, the court of appeals' interpretation creates unreasonable results and renders the third sentence of Wis. Stat. § 343.303 superfluous.
. The petitioner persuasively argues that the interpretation the defendant urges us to adopt would severely restrict the application of the second sentence of Wis. Stat. § 343.303. As noted above, the second sentence provides that an officer may use the PBT result to help decide whether to arrest a suspect for OWI. § 343.303. This provision seems to presume that an officer will be able to request the PBT during the process of determining whether probable cause for arrest exists, rather than only after probable cause for arrest has been established. After probable cause for arrest exists, the PBT is not really needed "for the purpose of deciding whether or not the person shall be arrested." Thus, the defendant's interpretation of the first sentence seems to unreasonably restrict the commonsense meaning of the second sentence.
. The defendant argues that under this interpretation the second sentence still makes sense because an officer who already has probable cause for an arrest may decide to request a PBT before actually arresting the suspect. Although this may occasionally be true, as a practical matter, it seems unlikely. If the officer must have already established probable cause for an arrest without the PBT, the officer will save time and resources by arresting the suspect and administering the implied consent test authorized upon arrest under Wis. Stat. § 343.305(2)-(3). In reality, the effect of this interpretation would be to restrict the usefulness of the PBT in a manner that conflicts with the commonsense meaning of the second sentence.
. Even worse, this interpretation of the first sentence in effect writes part of the third sentence out of the statute. The third sentence provides in part that the PBT result will be admissible in proceedings to establish that probable cause existed for an arrest. Wis. Stat. § 343.303. Yet, under the defendant's interpretation, the PBT result cannot be admitted until after probable cause for arrest has already been established. At that point, the PBT evidence would be cumulative and unnecessary to establish probable cause for the arrest. Thus, the PBT result would, in fact, not be admissible to show that there was probable cause for the arrest. This result renders part of the third sentence meaningless.
. Thus, under the defendant's interpretation, an officer could only request a PBT after already having established probable cause for an arrest, even though the statute explicitly provides that the officer may use the PBT result in determining whether to make an arrest. Furthermore, before presenting evidence of the PBT result to rebut a challenge to probable cause for an OWI arrest, the petitioner would have to prove that probable cause to arrest existed before the PBT was administered, even though the statute clearly states that the PBT result will be admissible "to show probable cause for an arrest, if the arrest is challenged." Wis. Stat. § 343.303.
. Basic principles of statutory construction disfavor an interpretation of the first sentence that yields such unreasonable results. The court of appeals acknowledged that its construction "limits the conditions under which a PBT may be requested and undercuts the use of a PBT to establish probable cause to arrest," Renz, 222 Wis. 2d at 442, but determined that " his circularity is a necessary
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