Criminal Law : Excessive BAC – Operating Vehicle – Sufficiency Of Evidence

Where a defendant’s breathalyzer test was administered 73 minutes after he was stopped for speeding and the officer had smelled alcohol on him at the time, the trial court presumably found that the defendant consumed a sufficient quantity of alcohol long enough before his arrest that the alcohol was in the process of being eliminated from his bloodstream, implying that the blood alcohol content was more than .080 when he drove, so the challenge to the BAC conviction is denied, but the state did not present evidence that the defendant was ever notified of the suspension of his license, so the state failed to meet its burden to support the conviction for driving with a revoked license.

Judgment is affirmed in part; reversed in part.

State v. Shoemaker (MLW No. 67142/Case No. WD76971 – 13 pages) (Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, Newton, J.) Appealed from circuit court, Jackson County, Grate, J. (Jeffrey Eastman, Gladstone, for appellant) (Joseph Yasso, Independence, for respondent).

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