State of Maine v. Graydon E. Adams Jr. ( 2014 )

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions
Decision: 2014 ME 143
Docket: Aro-14-135
Argued: October 28, 2014
Decided: December 18, 2014
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, SILVER, MEAD, GORMAN, and HJELM, JJ.
STATE OF MAINE
v.
GRAYDON E. ADAMS JR.
SILVER, J.
[¶1] Graydon E. Adams Jr. appeals from a judgment of the trial court
(Aroostook County, Hunter, J.) convicting him, on his conditional plea,
M.R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2), of operating a motor vehicle under the influence.
29-A M.R.S. § 2411 (1-A) (2013). On appeal, Adams challenges a preliminary
ruling by the court (Cuddy, J.) granting the State’s motion in limine to exclude
evidence of the results of a breath-alcohol test administered to Adams at his
workplace. We vacate the judgment and remand this case for further proceedings.
I. CASE HISTORY
[¶2] No transcript of the hearing before the trial court has been provided and
the record on appeal is limited. Therefore, the following facts are from the
2
documents filed by the parties and the limited record created incident to the
conditional plea.1
[¶3] On September 11, 2012, Adams was at his place of employment, the
Maine Military Authority in Limestone. Adams was “observed to be emitting an
odor of alcoholic beverage,” and his employer asked him to submit to a breath test.
The employer allegedly used a self-contained portable breath-alcohol testing
device. After the results showed that Adams had indicators of alcohol in his
system, Adams’s employer informed Adams that “company policy required him to
be sent home on unpaid leave.”
[¶4] Adams alleges that around the time that he left his employer’s
premises, “a Maine Military Authority employee called the dispatch for the
Limestone Police Department to report that [Adams] was driving a van South on
Route 89 and that he was under the influence.” Sometime after the alleged call
from Adams’s employer, a Limestone Police Department Officer stopped Adams
and arrested him after administering several field sobriety tests. The record does
1
Although both parties agreed that the testing at Adams’s workplace was not certified by the
Department of Health and Human Services, the State asserts in its brief that it disagrees with the facts as
presented in Adams’s brief, and it asserts that because the Superior Court held no evidentiary hearing,
most of the facts argued in Adams’s brief were not before the court. For example, Adams states in his
brief that the workplace breath test resulted in a reading of 0.04, but those results were not otherwise in
the record before the court.
3
not indicate how much time passed between the test administered at Adams’s
workplace and an intoxilyzer test administered at the Caribou Police Department.
[¶5] Adams was charged with operating under the influence, he requested a
jury trial, and his case was transferred to the Superior Court.2 The State filed a
motion in limine seeking to preclude Adams from using evidence of the workplace
test result to challenge the accuracy of the State’s test result. The State argued that
the testing device used at Adams’s workplace was unreliable and not approved by
the Department of Health and Human Services (the Department) pursuant to the
Motor Vehicle Code, 29-A M.R.S. § 2524(5) (2013).3 According to the court’s
written decision on the motion, at the hearing on December 16, 2013, counsel for
Adams argued that he “should be given [t]he opportunity to lay a foundation
regarding the validity and reliability of the testing machinery.” The court ruled
2
Following the initial charge, Adams filed a motion pursuant to M.R. Crim. P. 41A to suppress all
evidence obtained in the September 11, 2012, stop and search as in violation of his rights under the
Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 5 of the Maine Constitution.
That motion was denied by the Superior Court and is not at issue in this appeal.
3
Section 2524(5) provides:
For purposes of this section, only collection kits having a stamp of approval affixed by
the Department of Health and Human Services may be used to take a sample specimen of
blood or urine, except that a self-contained, breath-alcohol testing apparatus if reasonably
available may be used to determine the alcohol level.
Approved breath-alcohol testing apparatus must have a stamp of approval affixed by the
Department of Health and Human Services after periodic testing. That stamp is valid for
no more than one year.
29-A M.R.S. § 2524(5) (2013).
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that the workplace test results would be inadmissible pursuant to section 2524(5)
and granted the State’s motion, excluding any evidence of the workplace
breath-alcohol test result to challenge the accuracy of the State’s intoxilyzer test.
The court concluded that “[a]bsent a certification of the testing apparatus with an
approved certification from [the Department], the test results are not admissible.”
[¶6] Adams entered a conditional guilty plea pursuant to
M.R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2). He was sentenced to serve seven days in Aroostook
County Jail and pay $880 in fines and surcharges, and his right to operate a motor
vehicle was suspended for three years—the mandatory minimum sentence for
operating under the influence with one prior conviction. Adams then appealed the
order on the motion in limine. His sentence, fine, and license suspension were
stayed by order of the court pursuant to 29-A M.R.S. § 2483(5) (2013) pending
resolution of this appeal.
II. LEGAL ANALYSIS
[¶7] Adams argues that the trial court committed an error of law by relying
on the certification requirements of section 2524(5) to exclude any evidence
concerning the results of the breath test administered at his workplace. The State
contends that Adams failed to make an offer of proof pursuant to
M.R. Evid. 103(a)(2) and has therefore failed to preserve this issue for appeal. We
conclude that the trial court erred as a matter of law in relying on section 2524(5)
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to exclude evidence of the workplace breath-alcohol test and denying Adams the
opportunity to lay a foundation regarding the test’s validity and reliability.
A. The Applicability of Section 2524(5)
[¶8] “We review a trial court’s [action on] a motion in limine for an abuse
of discretion and its legal conclusions de novo.” State v. Dube, 2014 ME 43, ¶ 8,
87 A.3d 1219. Statutory interpretation is a matter of law in which “our primary
purpose is to give effect to the intent of the Legislature.” State v. Mourino,
2014 ME 131, ¶ 8, --- A.3d. --- (quotation marks omitted). “We seek to discern
from the plain language of the statute the real purpose of the legislation . . . . If the
statutory language is clear and unambiguous, we construe the statute in accordance
with its plain meaning in the context of the whole statutory scheme.” Id.
(quotation marks omitted).
[¶9] Pursuant to section 2524(5), “[a]pproved breath-alcohol testing
apparatus must have a stamp of approval affixed by the Department of Health and
Human Services after periodic testing.” Citing cases in which we refused to admit
into evidence the results of uncertified “ALERT” tests offered by the State,4
see, e.g., State v. Ifill, 560 A.2d 1075 (Me. 1989), the State maintains that the
workplace breath-alcohol test is inadmissible because it lacks the Department
4
“[T]he ALERT test is an orange box that a person blows into and that registers ‘pass’ or ‘fail.’
Although the test does not register a precise number, a ‘fail’ reading indicates a blood alcohol content
above .10%.” State v. Ifill, 560 A.2d 1075, 1075 (Me. 1989).
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approval required by section 2524(5). Those decisions, however, are inapposite
because they relate to the admissibility of breath tests administered by the State
and (1) offered by the State to attempt to prove an element of the crime of
operating under the influence, see, e.g., Ifill, 560 A.2d at 1077 (stating that the
results of a state-administered portable ALERT test are inadmissible), or
(2) offered by a defendant attempting to rebut the State’s evidence, see State v.
McConvey, 459 A.2d 562, 569 (Me. 1983) (“Blood-alcohol test results may be
admissible as rebuttal evidence provided the results are reliable.”).
[¶10] We agree with Adams that the accuracy of the State’s evidence
regarding the administration and the result of an intoxilyzer test may be challenged
by evidence, including evidence of another demonstrably reliable blood or breath
test result, that is not derived from a machine with a certificate as required by
29-A M.R.S. § 2524(5). A defendant is, thus, able to challenge the reliability of
test results offered by the State by any appropriate means that is otherwise
admissible in evidence—and the State may, of course, oppose its admission
through evidence showing that the defendant’s evidence is unreliable.
[¶11] We reach this conclusion after examining the overall statutory
scheme. Section 2524(5) requires that when a defendant is tested, the police must
use “breath-alcohol testing apparatus [with] a stamp of approval affixed by the
Department.” As Adams points out, section 2524(5) is part of the Motor Vehicle
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Code’s “Implied Consent” provisions that require a motorist to submit to
blood-alcohol testing when requested by a police officer, and do not apply to
independently administered breath tests offered by a defendant as rebuttal
evidence. See Mourino, 2014 ME 131, ¶ 8, --- A.3d. --- (noting that we must
“construe the statute . . . in the context of the whole statutory scheme” (quotation
marks omitted)). The plain language of section 2524 is clear that it does not
extend to tests other than those performed by the State pursuant to a defendant’s
“implied consent” to submit to an officer’s request when “there is probable cause
to believe a person has operated a motor vehicle while under the influence of
intoxicants . . . .” 29-A M.R.S. § 2521(1) (2013).
B. Preservation of the Issue for Appeal
[¶12] The State contends that Adams failed to preserve the issue of the
admissibility of his employer’s test because he did not make an offer of proof
pursuant to M.R. Evid. 103(a)(2). When the issue on appeal is preservation of an
objection to the exclusion of evidence, “M.R. Evid. 103(a)(2) requires the
proponent of [the] evidence to make its substance known to the court by an offer of
proof, unless the substance was apparent from the context of the question.” State
v. Howe, 2001 ME 181, ¶ 9, 788 A.2d 161 (footnote omitted). “An offer of proof
should contain not only the facts that are sought to be elicited, but also reference to
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the facts, circumstances, or legal grounds on which the testimony is admissible.”
Field & Murray, Maine Evidence § 103.4 at 16 (6th ed. 2007).
[¶13] The State is correct that Adams did not make a formal offer of proof.
But the court’s application of section 2524’s certification requirements caused it to
deny Adams any opportunity to present foundational evidence that could support
the workplace breath-alcohol test’s admissibility. The court stated that Adams had
argued that he “should be given [t]he opportunity to lay a foundation regarding the
validity and reliability of the testing machinery” before the court ruled on the
State’s motion. Thus, Adams properly requested that it permit him to make an
offer of proof. But because the court erroneously interpreted section 2524(5) as
being “dispositive” of the issue, it concluded that any foundational evidence
concerning the portable testing unit’s reliability would be futile and therefore
refused to allow Adams to present his argument or offer of proof. The court thus
held that “testimony of witnesses about the validity and reliability of the portable
testing apparatus would not be admissible.”
[¶14] The court’s decision, predicated on a flawed interpretation of
section 2524(5), denied Adams the opportunity to make a formal offer of proof.
Based on the court’s interpretation of the statute, the offer of proof on the issue of
reliability would have been a fruitless pursuit. Because we vacate the court’s
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decision on the statutory interpretation, on remand, Adams must be afforded an
opportunity to lay a foundation for the reliability of his employer’s test results.
The entry is:
Judgment vacated. Remanded for further proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
On the briefs and at oral argument:
Alan F. Harding, Esq., Hardings Law Office, Presque Isle, for
appellant Graydon E. Adams Jr.
John M. Pluto, Asst. Dist. Atty., Prosecutorial District No. 8, Caribou,
for appellee State of Maine
Aroostook County Superior Court (Caribou) docket number CR-2013-232
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY