People v. Lopez

147 Cal.Rptr.3d 559 (2012)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D was working at a restaurant and the restaurant's bartenders served D single shots of tequila: the first at 8:30 p.m. (during her work shift), the other two between 9:45 p.m. (when her shift ended) and 10:15 p.m. Shortly before 11:00 p.m., D left in her sport utility vehicle (SUV). On a narrow, curving road, the SUV struck the driver's side of a pickup truck traveling in the opposite direction, killing the driver, Allan Wolowsky. D was seriously injured; while being airlifted to a hospital, she told an emergency medical technician that she had had “a couple of drinks” at work, that she had been driving “really fast,” and that she had lost control of her SUV. At the hospital, at 1:04 a.m. (approximately two hours after the accident), two vials of blood were drawn for testing. At trial, criminalist John Willey testified that he had reviewed a laboratory report by his colleague, Jorge Peña, who had analyzed D's blood sample. Peña did not testify. Willey mentioned that, as described in Peña's report, Peña had used a gas chromatograph to analyze the sample. The report, Willey testified, stated that d's blood sample contained a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.09 percent. Willey explained that he had trained Peña and was “intimately familiar with [Peña's] procedures and how [Peña] tests [blood for] alcohol,” and that “each of the people who work at the lab is trained to process blood alcohol analysis in the same manner.” The trial court admitted into evidence a copy of Peña's laboratory report. d objected to the report's admission as well as to Willey's testimony about its contents. Toxicologist John Treuting testified that a person with a blood-alcohol level of 0.09 percent two hours after a collision who had consumed no alcohol during those two hours would at the time of the accident have been intoxicated with a blood-alcohol level of 0.12 percent. Treuting said that if, as the restaurant's bartenders testified, D had only a single shot of tequila about three and a half hours before the accident and two more single shots of tequila between 45 and 90 minutes before the accident, D's blood-alcohol level should have been only around 0.04 percent. Treuting added that the 0.12 percent level might have been achieved if D had double shots of tequila instead of the single shots to which the bartenders testified. Coworker Acosta corroborated D's testimony about drinking only two shots of tequila. Accident reconstruction expert Stephen Plourd agreed with D that she was going about 50-55 mph at the time of the fatal collision. Dr. Ian McIntyre, the manager of the San Diego County Medical Examiner's forensic toxicology laboratory, testified that at the time of the accident Wolowsky, the driver of the other car, was intoxicated, with a blood-alcohol level of 0.11 percent. Two California Highway Patrol officers who had investigated the fatal collision testified about its cause: After D had veered onto the right-hand shoulder of the narrow road, she “overcorrected” and drove into the oncoming lane, colliding with Wolowsky's pickup truck. Accident reconstruction expert Ernest Phillips testified that Dt had been driving between 68 and 75 miles per hour and that after drifting onto the right shoulder of the road, she steered to the left into oncoming traffic, causing the collision. Phillips attributed the accident to D's speed, intoxication, and inattention. D was convicted of vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, as charged, and the trial court sentenced her to two years in prison. D appealed. the Court of Appeal reversed the judgment of conviction; it held that admitting nontestifying analyst Peña's laboratory report into evidence and permitting criminalist Willey to testify about the report's contents violated D's right to confront Peña at trial. P appealed.