Background
After a report that a vehicle may have been traveling the wrong way on an interstate, officers found Carter Andreae in the driver’s seat of a mud-covered Jeep tangled in a fence, with its engine running. Officers observed alcohol-related indicators, including an odor of alcohol, glossy or bloodshot eyes, slurred speech, balance problems, alcoholic beverages in the Jeep, and field-sobriety-test clues. Andreae also described driving over a hill, through a swamp, and into the interstate fence.
Andreae was arrested for an OWI-related offense and refused a requested blood test after being read the Informing the Accused form. A deputy obtained a warrant for a blood draw, and the circuit court later found Andreae guilty of operating with a prohibited alcohol concentration, with a blood alcohol content of .226, and found his refusal unreasonable.
Before the refusal hearing and bench trial, Andreae sought suppression for lack of probable cause, challenged the blood-draw warrant under Franks and Mann, and sought dismissal or evidentiary sanctions because a body-camera recording was deleted under a 120-day retention policy and a squad-car recording was accidentally formatted and deleted.
The Court’s Holding
The court affirmed both judgments. It held that the totality of the circumstances established probable cause to arrest Andreae for an OWI-related offense. Officers were not required to eliminate a possible head injury as an innocent explanation for some signs of impairment before arresting him, particularly given the alcohol indicators, failed field tests, and crash-related driving.
The court also upheld denial of the Franks-Mann motion. The circuit court’s findings—that an officer saw Andreae in the driver’s seat with the engine running and relayed that information to the deputy, and that Andreae admitted driving on the frontage road—were not clearly erroneous. Thus, Andreae had not shown that the warrant affidavit contained intentionally or recklessly false statements.
Finally, the court held that the circuit court properly declined to impose spoliation sanctions. The body-camera recording was deleted under department policy before its relevance was recognized, and the squad-car recording was deleted by accident. Neither deletion amounted to egregious conduct or a flagrant, knowing disregard of the judicial process; the lack of recordings could instead be addressed through cross-examination.
Key Takeaways
- Probable cause for an OWI arrest does not require officers to rule out every innocent explanation for signs of impairment.
- A Franks-Mann challenge requires proof that the affiant intentionally or recklessly included false information in the warrant affidavit.
- Dismissal for spoliation requires egregious destruction of evidence; routine-policy deletion and accidental deletion did not meet that standard here.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that OWI probable cause is assessed objectively and under the totality of the circumstances, even when an alternative explanation such as a possible injury exists. It also underscores the high threshold for suppressing evidence based on a warrant affidavit or dismissing a civil OWI-related proceeding for lost recordings.