A man who was sentenced to state prison for a 2018 Escondido crash that killed two people will be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea because his blood was illegally drawn without a warrant while he was unconscious or unresponsive, an appeals court panel ruled Friday.
Francisco Andres Alvarez, 32, pleaded guilty to charges of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and DUI causing injury for the March 25, 2018, crash that killed Brandon Contreras and Ana Lira, both 19.
Prosecutors alleged that a blood test revealed alcohol, marijuana and cocaine were in Alvarez’s system at the time of the crash.
Police said Alvarez ran a red light and struck the victims’ Mustang, killing Contreras and Lira, as well as seriously injuring an underage boy who was riding in the victims’ vehicle.
Following his guilty pleas, Alvaraz was sentenced to nearly eight years in state prison last year, but he was allowed to remain out of custody while appealing a judge’s decision to allow the blood test results to be used as evidence.
More than a year after the crash, the U.S Supreme Court ruled that authorities may draw blood from unconscious people suspected of driving under the influence — but only in cases of “exigent circumstances,” such as when evidence faces an imminent threat of being lost or destroyed.
A three-justice panel from the 4th District Court of Appeal found those circumstances did not exist in Alvarez’s case.
According to the appellate panel’s written opinion, Alvarez was taken to a hospital after the crash and became unresponsive about 45 minutes after speaking with a police officer.
The officer then called for a phlebotomist, who drew Alvarez’s blood about two-and-a-half hours after the crash.
The officer who obtained the blood draw testified that “getting the warrant would have created substantial delays primarily because he was the only officer at the hospital, he did not have the proper paperwork, and other officers were still investigating the scene,” according to the panel’s opinion.
The officer also testified that by the time the warrant paperwork arrived, he thought Alvarez might be taken to another part of the hospital, preventing him from getting the blood sample.
The justices wrote that securing a warrant would not have diverted from the investigation. They also wrote that Alvarez became unresponsive about 45 minutes after the officer started speaking with him at the hospital, unlike other cases in which the alleged DUI driver is unconscious from the time the crash occurs.
The panel’s opinion orders that Alvarez’s motion to suppress the blood test results be granted and that he is permitted to withdraw his guilty pleas.
Alvarez has since been arrested and charged in a new DUI case, in which prosecutors allege he drove drunk in July. He was charged with two new DUI counts in August and is currently jailed without bail in that case.
