COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - An appeals court has exonerated a central Missouri man who was sentenced to prison in 2016 for driving while intoxicated as a “prior and persistent offender.”
The Western District Court of Appeals on Tuesday found there was insufficient evidence to connect Richard Wilhite’s intoxication to his operating of a motor vehicle, the Columbia Missourian reported.
Wilhite received an eight-year prison sentence in 2016. The case was the Sturgeon man’s ninth DWI conviction, according to an affidavit.
The affidavit said officers arrested Wilhite after strangers took him home in August 2015. The witnesses said they spotted him wandering on a road near a truck that had crashed in a ditch with the driver’s side door open, the affidavit said. State Highway Patrol Trooper Grant Johnson found empty and partially consumed beer bottles inside the truck, according to the appeals court’s opinion.
Officers said Wilhite denied being at the scene of the crash or consuming any intoxicants, and refused to provide a blood sample. Hours passed by the time officers obtained a warrant and performed a blood alcohol test, which showed Wilhite had a blood alcohol content of 0.129, according to the opinion. The legal limit is 0.08.
The court overturned the conviction “given the absence of evidence to establish the approximate time of Wilhite’s operation of the vehicle and his lack of access to alcohol between the operation of the vehicle and the time the witnesses observed his intoxication,” according to the opinion.
The court said it could be reasonably inferred Wilhite was driving the truck because he was the only one at the scene, but there’s no way of confidently knowing whether he was intoxicated at the time he was operating the vehicle.
Wilhite completed a long-term treatment program and “is appreciative of this decision,” said Kevin O’Brien, his attorney.
“There are no slam dunks in the appeals court,” O’Brien said. “We were hopeful. We felt like we had a strong issue for appeal.”
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Information from: Columbia Missourian, http://www.columbiamissourian.com
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