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State v. Garnett

Officer's failure to read the last word of the implied consent warning did not alter warning's substance such that defendant's refusal to submit to blood testing should be suppressed.

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The State appeals from the trial court’s order granting Gordon Garnett’s motion to suppress evidence of his refusal to submit to a state-administered test of his blood. Because we find the trial court erroneously interpreted the word “entirety” in OCGA § 40-5-67.1 b, we reverse.

On September 16, 1997, a police officer arrested Garnett for driving under the influence of alcohol in violation of OCGA § 40-6-391 a 1 and read him the implied consent warning from a pink card. During the motion to suppress hearing, the police officer was asked to read from the card as he read to Garnett on the evening of Garnett’s arrest. The hearing transcript shows that the officer omitted the last word, “law,” of the implied consent warning during this testimony.1 In its order granting the motion to suppress, the trial court found that the implied consent warning on the officer’s pink card “contains the exact language of the warning that must be given.” However, because the transcript showed that the officer omitted the last word when he read the card during the hearing, the trial court ruled that he did not give the warning to Garnett in its “entirety.” It then ruled that it was required to suppress evidence of Garnett’s refusal to submit to a blood test because the officer omitted a word during his testimony, even though it also found that the omission of this word did not alter the substance of the required warning. Under the trial court’s interpretation of OCGA § 40-5-67.1 b, our courts cannot consider whether the substance of the warning has been changed if a word is omitted because the warning has consequently not been given in its “entirety.”

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