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State v. Doornink12/11/2002
Kit Jay Doornink has appealed his conviction following a jury trial for the crime of serious injury by vehicle in violation of Iowa Code section 707.6A(4) (1999). AFFIRMED.
Kit Jay Doornink has appealed his conviction following a jury trial for the crime of serious injury by vehicle in violation of Iowa Code section 707.6A(4) (1999). He alleges the trial court erred in admitting evidence and refusing to grant his requests for a mistrial. We find no reversible error and therefore affirm the trial court.
I. Facts and background.
On July 17, 2000 at about 6:00 p.m., Kit Jay Doornink drove his pickup truck into the right side of van driven by Harold Shoemaker at an uncontrolled intersection of two gravel roads in Sioux County, Iowa. The Shoemaker vehicle had the directional right of way. Shoemaker and occupants of his vehicle were injured. When the investigating officers arrived, the drivers of both vehicles and the occupants of Shoemaker's vehicle had been taken to the hospital. Sioux County Deputy Sheriff Waterman looked inside Doornink's pickup and observed soft drink cans and can "cozies" on the floor and a cooler on the front seat, all in plain view from outside the truck. He entered the vehicle and looked in the cooler, observing unopened cans of soft drinks.
Then the deputy examined the tires on the pickup and discovered a broken vodka bottle on the ground inside the rear wheel on the driver's side. He found pieces of broken glass on the rear axle and suspension which he determined came from the vodka bottle. There was a wet brown paper sack on the ground and a wet spot on the ground near the vodka bottle. Because there was no dirt or debris or tire tracks on the sack or bottle, Waterman decided the vodka bottle had been thrown under the truck after the accident.
Deputy Waterman then reentered the truck and retrieved two of the open cans from the floor. He tested the contents using a device used to administer preliminary breath tests (PBT) and concluded the contents contained alcohol.
This information was passed on and, suspecting Doornink may have been drinking, deputies Knight and Hoekstra attempted to contact him at the hospital and found he had been discharged. They proceeded to his home. Doornink met them in his driveway. He acknowledged driving and stated the collision was his fault. In response to inquiries, he twice advised the deputies he had not consumed alcohol since the collision. He also told them he had been drinking the night before, but later stated he had a drink that morning.
Doornink consented to a preliminary breath test and agreed to go to the police station with them for additional tests. On the way, he told the deputy it was ironic that he was supposed to go to an alcohol treatment center a couple of days earlier, but didn't go, and that if he had, he would not be in the trouble he was in now. At the station, with Doornink's consent, standard field sobriety tests were administered as well as a breath test using a 4011A Intoxilyzer. The test, administered at 9:15 p.m., resulted in an alcohol concentration of .122. It was determined the collision occurred at 6:08 p.m. The deputy then told Doornink he was under arrest for operating while intoxicated.
Prior to trial a hearing was held on Doornink's motion to suppress evidence. He claimed the officer's search of his vehicle was not justified, thus the soft drink cans, cozies and cooler, or its contents, should not be permitted in evidence. More importantly, he claimed all subsequent statements attributed to him should be suppressed as well as the sobriety tests and the breath test. He maintained all of these were fruits of an illegal sear
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