Opinion
No. 60305-1-I.
September 22, 2008.
Appeal from a judgment of the Superior Court for King County, No. 06-1-10053-7, Michael J. Fox, J., entered July 11, 2007.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
Carl Roy was charged with driving while under the influence (DUI). The trial court dismissed based upon the corpus delicti rule. We agree with the State that dismissal was error. Accordingly, we reverse and remand for further proceedings.
FACTS
Around midnight on October 5, 2005, King County Deputies Schwab and Baurer were dispatched to the report of an injury accident in North Bend. They found a small roadster crashed into a guard rail on the side of the road and Carl Roy on the ground on the passenger side, receiving aid from another person. After paramedics arrived, Deputy Baurer obtained a written statement from that person, who stated he had been driving past and stopped to help Roy. Deputy Schwab's incident report listed Roy as the registered owner of the roadster.
Roy was transported by ambulance to a hospital, where Deputy Schwab spoke with him. During their conversation, the deputy smelled the odor of alcohol on Roy's breath. Roy admitted to having been drinking and agreed to take to a blood test. The State charged Roy in district court with DUI.
Roy filed a motion to dismiss the charge under the corpus delicti rule, relying upon State v. Hamrick, 19 Wn. App. 417, 576 P.2d 912 (1978). At a hearing on the motion, Deputies Schwab and Baurer both testified. The court refused to allow Deputy Schwab to describe the statement of the person who had stopped to render aid. Roy argued that because the State had produced no evidence that he was driving the car at the time of the accident, it had not met its burden of production to show the corpus delicti of the crime of DUI. The trial court agreed and dismissed.
When asked by the State why he believed Roy was the only person associated with the car, Deputy Schwab stated his opinion was based on the amount of damage to the front end of the car, the injuries that would be consistent with such a crash, "and the statement of the witness saying that." Clerk's Papers at 67. When the defense objected to this hearsay testimony, the court inquired, "That witness is not here[?]" When the State replied, "No, Your Honor," the court sustained the objection and excluded any testimony by Deputy Schwab regarding what that person had told him. Id.
The State appealed the district court's ruling to superior court, which affirmed. A motion for reconsideration or clarification was denied. This court granted discretionary review.
ANALYSIS
The statements of a person charged with a crime are not, by themselves, sufficient to prove the corpus delicti and must be corroborated by other evidence. State v. Aten, 130 Wn.2d 640, 655-56, 927 P.2d 210 (1996). Independent evidence must corroborate or confirm the statement and must be consistent with guilt and inconsistent with a hypothesis of innocence. State v. Brockob, 159 Wn.2d 311, 328-29, 150 P.3d 59 (2006); Aten, 130 Wn.2d at 660. The purpose of the corpus delicti rule is to protect against unjust convictions based on false confessions. State v. Rooks, 130 Wn. App. 787, 802, 125 P.3d 192 (2005).
In a DUI case, the corpus delicti requires evidence that defendant drove or controlled the vehicle and did so under the influence of intoxicating liquor. Hamrick, 19 Wn. App. at 419. We review such questions de novo. State v. Pineda, 99 Wn. App. 65, 77-78, 992 P.2d 525 (2000).
In Hamrick, the issue was whether Hamrick's uncorroborated admission that he was driving a vehicle involved in an alcohol-related accident could be used to establish the corpus delicti of the offense. The police were unable to establish ownership of the vehicles, but Hamrick admitted he had been driving the car. At trial, the evidence consisted primarily of the officers' testimony. Because the only evidence that Hamrick drove the car was his own admission, the trial court dismissed and the court of appeals affirmed.
Here, the State argued that the corpus delicti rule and Hamrick were not pertinent because Roy's admissions dealt only with his drinking, which was corroborated by other evidence. The district court disagreed:
[T]he major issue in this case is the Hamrick issue. . . . [T]he deputy concluded when he arrived on the scene, Deputy Schwab[,] that all indications were that the defendant was driving. It seems that he based that on the fact that the defendant was laying on the ground injured and someone else was attending to him. As [defense counsel] points out, however, it could very well be that the person attending was, in fact, the driver of the vehicle and the defendant having been a passenger just happened to be the only one that was injured. So clearly the State has to produce some evidence that would tie the defendant and his injuries to being the driver of that damaged vehicle which clearly had been in an accident. In this case[,] while that may very well have been, the State produced no evidence whatsoever as to the nature of the damage to the vehicle and how that tied in with the nature of the defendant's injuries[.] [N]or did they produce any evidence as to the condition of the pass, the other person who was attending to him, who as [defense counsel] said[,] could very well have been the driver of the vehicle. On that basis[,] I will dismiss the matter.
Clerk's Papers at 82.
The district court's reliance on Hamrick was misplaced. Roy made no statements to police suggesting he was the driver of the roadster. Roy's only admissions related to his consumption of alcohol, to which Roy stipulated and which were corroborated. See State v. Cerrillo, 122 Wn. App. 341, 351, 93 P.3d 960 (2004) (smell of alcohol emanating from driver indicated the suspect was likely under the influence). The trial court appears to have undertaken a sort of sufficiency analysis. But the hearing was convened to address Roy's corpus delicti motion. As to whether Roy was the driver, the State had other evidence it could present at trial, including the vehicle registration and the testimony of the person who stopped to give aid. Dismissal of the charge cannot be justified under the corpus delicti rule.
Defense counsel at the hearing stated, "[W]e're not gonna [sic] contest the statement, to that statement and we'll stipulate to the, to that statement." Clerk's Papers at 81.
The district and superior courts erred in dismissing the DUI charge against Roy. We reverse and remand for further proceedings consistent herewith.
In view of our holding, we need not decide the State's alternative argument that it produced sufficient evidence at the hearing to establish the corpus delicti.