Breath-Test Warning Adequate, Court Says

The state Supreme Court on Thursday put prosecution of hundreds of drunken driving cases back on track, dismissing challenges to the standard warning given drivers before they take a roadside breath test.

In a unanimous decision, the high court said the warnings are adequate.

The decision reversed a Thurston County District Court order that disallowed evidence against several people who took breath tests and others who refused to take them.

The Thurston County court held that the implied-consent warnings did not give suspects enough information to make an informed and intelligent decision on whether to take the test.

Several other district courts have ruled that breath tests should be thrown out as evidence because drivers are not adequately warned of the consequences of taking or refusing to take such a test.

Thurston County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Jim Powers hailed the decision.

“It removes an impediment standing in the way of bringing these cases to resolution,” Power said.

He estimated at least 50 drunken-driving cases were on hold in Thurston County pending issuance of the high court ruling.

“Now these cases are back on track for trial,” Powers said. He said he didn’t know how many other cases were on hold in other jurisdictions but estimated they number in the hundreds.

Washington’s implied-consent law was passed by voters as an initiative in 1968. The law says motorists are assumed to give their permission for testing when they apply for a driver’s license and use state highways.

The law also states that a blood or breath test showing the driver’s blood-alcohol content to be 0.10 percent or higher allows a legal presumption that the driver was intoxicated.

In 1994, the Legislature amended the law to include new penalties for refusing to take the breath test and new consequences for taking the test and failing it.

The standard warning that state troopers and police give motorists before asking them to submit to the breath test states there are penalties for not taking it. But it does not detail some of the possible administrative and criminal consequences of refusing to take the test, or of taking it and failing.

Those possible consequences include license revocation and stiffer penalties for those who refuse to take the test but are convicted of drunken driving.

Attorneys for the eight people challenging the law concede the warning is accurate as far as it goes, but contend it is incomplete.

Justice Rosselle Pekelis, writing for the court, dismissed the argument that those who refuse to take the test are deprived of the opportunity to make an informed, intelligent decision.

“Included in the statutory warnings is the admonition that refusal to take the test may be used in a criminal trial,” Pekelis wrote. “That information is sufficient to alert respondents to the possibility that their refusal could be used at any phase of a criminal trial, including sentencing.”

The high court also turned aside arguments by those who took the test that the warning is inadequate because it does not list all the possible administrative consequences of consenting.