State v. DiStefano12/20/2000
ving laws in the early 1980s. In 1982, the offense of driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor (DUI) was upgraded to a misdemeanor, and the necessity of producing competent evidence of intoxication in addition to proof of a defendant's blood alcohol level was eliminated. *fn1 A year later, the DUI statute, § 31-27-2, was further amended by the addition of subsection (b), which provided that any person charged with DUI, "whose blood alcohol concentration is one-tenth of 1% or more by weight as shown by a chemical analysis of a blood, breath or urine sample shall be guilty" of DUI. *fn2 In 1983, all statutory presumptions against a finding of intoxication were deleted from § 31-27-2.1, in an amendment entitled "Revocation of license upon refusal to submit to chemical test." *fn3 This amendment relieved the state of the necessity of producing expert testimony that demonstrated the effects of a given blood alcohol concentration on the accused. See State v. Lussier, 511 A.2d 958, 960 (R.I. 1986). Further, the General Assembly enacted two additional felony offenses at that time, § 31-27-1.1, entitled "Driving so as to endanger, resulting in personal injury," and § 31-27-2.2, entitled "Driving under the influence of liquor or drugs, resulting in death."
RHODE ISLAND'S DRUNK-DRIVING LAWS -- PRESENT DAY
In the case at bar, defendant was charged under the current version of § 31-27-2.2, *fn4 driving under the influence of liquor or drugs, death resulting, a felony. Although this statute defines the crime of DUI, death resulting, and prescribes the punishment for that offense, it does not set forth the methods of proof to be used in determining whether the crime was committed. Rather, § 31-27-2(c) *fn5 provides that evidence of the amount of intoxicating liquor or drugs, as shown by chemical analysis of the defendant's blood, breath, or urine, is inadmissible unless the defendant has consented to the test. However, this subsection specifically references § 31-27-2(a), misdemeanor DUI, and makes no reference to felony DUI offenses. Therefore, the dispositive question for this Court is whether the Legislature intended to exclude nonconsensual test results in DUI felony cases by explicitly including the consent requirement for misdemeanor prosecutions and implicitly including the requirement in felony prosecutions. For the reasons that follow, the Chief Justice and I conclude that this Court's decisions in State v. Timms, 505 A.2d 1132 (R.I. 1986), and State v. DiCicco, 707 A.2d 251 (R.I. 1998), compel us to answer this question in the affirmative.
Our holding in Timms, in which we espoused the well-known canon of statutory construction in pari materia (statutes relating to the same subject matter should be construed together for consistency and to effectuate the policy of the law), would seem to indicate that consent would be necessary to make blood tests admissible, even in cases of DUI, death resulting. Timms, 505 A.2d at 1135. Although the issue before us in Timms involved a different public safety statute, namely § 31-27-1, entitled "Driving so as to endanger, resulting in death," our analysis of the two comparable statutes applies just as forcibly in this case. In Timms, we considered whether the actual consent requirement in § 31-27-2 would apply, or whether a written consent form, in accordance with the Confidentiality of Health Care Information Act, was required for hospital personnel to obtain defendant's blood. Timms, 505 A.2d at 1134-35. We stated:
"Although § 31-27-1 * * * does not explicitly require that the defendant consent to the taking of a blood test before that test may be introduced as evidence in a criminal prosecution, the Legislature must have intended it to inclu
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Rhode Island DUI Attorneys
DUI Lawyers
|