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Baber v. State8/31/2000
As amended January 4, 2001. The Petitioner's Motion for Rehearing is hereby denied.
We have for review a decision on the following question certified to be of great public importance:
DOES LOVE V. GARCIA, 634 So.2d 158 (Fla.1994) APPLY IN CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS WHERE BLOOD ALCOHOL TEST RESULTS ARE OFFERED AS PROOF TO ESTABLISH AN ELEMENT OF THE OFFENSE, IF THE BLOOD ALCOHOL TESTS WERE ADMINISTERED BY HOSPITAL PERSONNEL FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT PURPOSES? Baber v. State, 738 So. 2d 379, 382 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999).
We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. We answer the certified question affirmatively and approve the district court's decision.
The State charged and the jury convicted petitioner of DUI manslaughter. The dispositive facts are as follows:
In the early evening of November 11, 1995, [petitioner] was observed driving erratically in a northerly direction on Military Trail in Palm Beach County. He then turned left to go west, but went into the east bound lane of 45th Street. He struck an oncoming vehicle, killing the driver and injuring the passenger.
[Petitioner], who was seriously injured, was taken to St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach where his blood was tested for alcohol content on the hospital's DuPont ACA IV clinical analyzer. [Petitioner] represents in his brief, and the parties agreed at oral argument, that this was done for purposes of medical treatment. This test, which uses blood serum, reflected a blood alcohol level of .274 at the time of the accident. The blood serum test result was then converted to a whole blood result reflecting a blood alcohol level of from .23 to .25.
In order to introduce the blood alcohol report, the state called the hospital's medical records custodian who laid the necessary foundation under the business record hearsay exception, section 90.803(6)(a), Florida Statutes (1995). The state also called the head of the chemistry department of the hospital who controlled the laboratory. He testified that he had copied [petitioner]'s blood test results from the computer system, described the manner in which the report was prepared, and described how the machine, which the hospital had been using since 1991, determines blood alcohol levels based on blood serum testing. He also explained the daily and weekly maintenance performed on the machine according to the manufacturer's instructions. Baber v. State, 738 So. 2d 379, 380 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999).
Petitioner objected to the submission of the record absent testimony from the laboratory technician who performed the test and chain of custody testimony. See id.
On appeal, petitioner raised, among other things, the issue of the admission of the disputed record under Love v. Garcia, 634 So. 2d 158 (Fla. 1994). The district court observed:
In Love[,] . . . the Florida Supreme Court held in a personal injury case that a blood alcohol test report contained in a hospital record was admissible with no testimony other than that of the business record custodian of the hospital qualifying the report as a business record. The court reasoned that if such a report is sufficiently trustworthy to be relied on for medical treatment, it is sufficiently trustworthy to be admissible in evidence as a business record, unless the party opposing the admission can show that it is untrustworthy. Id. at 380-81.
Based on the foregoing, the court concluded that this Court's decision in Love applies in criminal cases and, therefore, the report was properly admitted as a business record through the testimony of the hospital's records custodian. See id. at 382. We agree.
The right of a d
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