Missouri Supreme Court rejects state’s appeal in DWI case

The state filed an interlocutory appeal challenging a lower court’s order sustaining the defendant’s motion in an ongoing driving while intoxicated (DWI) case to suppress certain statements and evidence. The Missouri Supreme Court dismissed the appeal after discovering the state missed the deadline to file its challenge.

The court previously heard oral arguments in the case in September.

As Missouri Lawyers Media previously reported, the defendant in this case, Amanda Mire, was charged in 2022 in Greene County for driving under the influence of alcohol. The state appealed the lower court’s previous decision to suppress Mire’s statements made after being administered Midazolam.

Mire’s attorneys defended the lower court’s decision in their response to the state, saying seizure of Mire’s blood during the police’s testing of it “violated the Fourth Amendment and Article I, sec. 15 of the Missouri Constitution because there was substantial evidence for the trial court to find that defendant did not knowingly and voluntarily verbally consent to the blood draw in that she was involuntarily administered a drug and experienced the tranquilizing effects of the drug prior to being read the implied-consent law and verbally consenting to the blood draw.”

In its points relied on, the state countered that the defendant impliedly consented to the blood draw “regardless of the administration of Midazolam,” that she never explicitly withdrew this consent and that the Miranda waiver was valid because there was no evidence the Midazolam caused her to be incapable of voluntarily waiving her rights.

Now the state’s highest court has sided with Mire again, this time over a technicality considering the state missed its deadline to appeal.

“While statutes granting the right to an appeal are liberally construed, that liberal construction cannot save a notice of appeal that is filed untimely,” the court wrote in its opinion authored by Judge Robin Ransom citing State v. Robbins. “If the February 26 docket entry qualifies as an order of the circuit court with the substantive effect resulting in suppressing the evidence at issue, the state’s notice of appeal, filed March 11, was late under section 547.200.4. This Court holds the docket entry qualifies as such an order. The docket entry unequivocally expressed the circuit court’s ruling suppressing the evidence.”

Justices Brent Powell, Zel Fischer and Paul C. Wilson concurred with the opinion. Justice Ginger Gooch dissented and justices Mary Russell and Kelly Broniec concurred with Gooch.

Gooch argued in her dissent that the state did file a timely appeal because the Feb. 26 docket entry should not have started the timer for the state to file its appeal. Instead, she said the “judgement and order” filed on March 11 should have been the date from which the state had to meet its deadline. The state filed its appeal on March 11, the same day the order was filed.

“From a practitioner’s point of view, what else was the state supposed to do? The state did what competent counsel would be expected to do and trusted the circuit court would do what it said and enter a written order on a later date, which is exactly what the circuit court did,” Gooch wrote. “The principal opinion concludes the state lost its right to appeal under section 547.200.1(3) by relying on the circuit court’s directions. The principal opinion places the state in the untenable position of disregarding or defying a circuit court’s directions or losing the right to appeal.”

The case is: State of Missouri v. Amanda M. Mire, Case No. SC100967.