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State v. McQuillan3/28/2003
In the above-consolidated appeals involving prosecutions for DUI (driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor), defendants challenge the district court's refusal to suppress breath tests based on their contention that the administrative rules pertaining to the collection of breath samples are legally insufficient. We affirm.
2. Before addressing the principal issue common to each of the consolidated appeals, we consider the lead defendant's argument that the district court did not have jurisdiction to suspend his driver's license because a final suspension hearing was not held within forty-two days of the charged offense, as required by 23 V.S.A. § 1205(h) (final suspension hearing may not occur more than forty-two days after alleged offense without consent of defendant or showing of good cause). We conclude that the final hearing was not untimely.
3. Defendant was arrested on February 16, 2002, and charged with DUI, second offense. On February 25, the arraignment on the criminal charge and the preliminary civil suspension hearing took place. Defendant filed several motions, and the district court scheduled the final suspension hearing for March 26. At the hearing on that date, defendant moved to exclude the breath test because of the State's failure to provide a complete printout of all analytical results and other data stored in the DataMaster machine used to collect his breath sample. The court denied the motion after the State advised that it had forwarded defendant's discovery request to the Department of Health, but that not all of the requested material had been supplied due to the Department's limited resources. When the court was unable to complete the hearing and had to continue it until the following Monday, April 1, defendant filed a motion to dismiss. The court denied that motion as well, stating that the delay had been caused by defendant's discovery requests. The final hearing was completed on April 1.
4. Because the hearing was held within the statutory time frame as provided by our rules, we need not consider whether the court found good cause for the delay and, if so, whether the evidence supports such a finding. The forty-second day following the alleged offense was Saturday, March 30, 2002. "In computing any period of time prescribed or allowed by 23 V.S.A. § 1205 and this rule [concerning procedures for civil license suspensions], Rule 6(a) shall apply except that intermediate Saturdays, Sundays and state or federal legal holidays shall be included in the*175 computation." **806 D.C.C.R. 80.5(i) (emphasis added). Under V.R.C.P. 6(a), in computing the time period under the applicable statute, "[t]he last day of the period so computed shall be included, unless it is a Saturday, a Sunday, or a State or federal legal holiday, ... in which event the period runs until the end of the next day which is not one of the aforementioned days." Hence, in this case, the final day of the applicable statutory time period was Monday, April 1, 2002, the day on which the final suspension hearing was completed.
5. We now turn to defendants' arguments challenging the procedures adopted by the Department of Health concerning the collection of breath samples. We begin by providing some factual and legal background that is needed to put defendants' arguments in perspective. In February 1992, pursuant to the directives in 23 V.S.A. § 1203, the Department of Health promulgated regulations that required certain methods of analysis for breath samples and established non-instrument-specific performance standards. See 4 Code of Vermont Rules 13 140 003 (1997). One of the subsections of the regulations, which were implemented in compliance with the Vermont Administrative Procedure Act (APA), provided that the specific i
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