Attorney asks judge to suppress evidence in fatal Highway 111 crash involving former Hamilton County reserve deputy
Attorney
On
From there, officer
But Wright's search warrant affidavit was too sparse on the details to establish probable cause of intoxication, Davis wrote in his motion. The officer wrote that Whaley's body odor smelled of "an unknown intoxicant," Davis wrote. But he didn't detail when Whaley drank alcohol, how much he drank, or how many hours had passed, Davis said. He also didn't include any physical description of what Whaley was doing or any mention of a field sobriety test, Davis said.
"This court has seen literally tens of thousands of affidavits that contain descriptions of criminal defendants who have consumed too much alcohol and are intoxicated," Davis wrote in a motion. "Those affidavits include details involving the defendants' speech, swaying, standing, falling, ability to follow directions, ability to communicate, how they perform on field sobriety tests, their ability to retrieve their license, registration or insurance from their vehicles or wallets, and dozens of other details about why a particular defendant is impaired. These details are totally missing from the affidavit at issue and the conclusory allegations remaining fail to establish probable cause in this case."
In a motion filed in May, Davis said Whaley's low alcohol content of .02 is unreliable "in that the state intends to extrapolate from these test results and allege that the defendant was DUI at the time of the accident." He added that testing it four hours after the incident was unreasonable. In response, Post disagreed four hours was too long and said a jury should weigh the issue. He added that
Attorneys will discuss both issues further on
Whaley is charged with vehicular homicide, reckless driving, driving on divided highway, failure to yield, failure to maintain lane, speeding, drivers to exercise due care and two counts of driving under the influence.
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