Court order suppresses results of blood test as evidence against former Kingston police chief

Posted Saturday, July 20, 2019 10:37 pm

On Jan. 8, Clayton Grant Patterson, of Rydal, was involved in an accident so severe it led to a passenger being airlifted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Patterson — a Bartow County Sheriff’s Office employee for roughly a decade and the former chief of police for the City of Kingston — was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of multiple substances shortly thereafter.

But if Patterson’s case goes to trial, the results of a motion hearing in Bartow Superior Court earlier this week would prevent prosecutors from informing jurors about blood tests taken from the defendant — including one that came back positive for alprazolam.



Lance McCoy, who serves as Patterson’s attorney, argued that probable cause was not laid out in an affidavit he expected the State to tender as evidence, adding information provided by a Georgia State Patrol (GSP) trooper to the Bartow County Magistrate Court “was not sufficient” to make a decision “that controlled substances, drugs and/or other alcohol would be contained in Mr. Patterson’s blood.”



McCoy also argued that he believed the Bartow County Magistrate Court could not authorize the transport to or searching of blood at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab in DeKalb County.



Cherokee Judicial Circuit Judge D. Scott Smith, however, was not as receptive to that proposition, in which McCoy argued that a second search warrant was needed for a GBI technician to test the defendant’s blood. He cited the Georgia Court of Appeals decision in Mastrogiovanni v. State as his rationale for denying the motion.



“I believe the holding of the Court of Appeals in that 2013 case is controlling as to fungible items as well as to non-fungible items by the listing of drug evidence as an example,” he said. “Although that case is not specifically on the point of blood, I do think it is significantly on point enough to cover this instance.”



But Judge Smith did side with McCoy on the motion to suppress the findings of the defendant’s blood tests as admissible evidence, stating the information arresting GSP trooper Dillon Graves gave to a magistrate judge was “too brief and conclusory” to justify probable cause for the issuance of a search warrant.



Graves took to the witness stand to describe responding to the scene of the single vehicle crash near Colonel Way, which he said involved a “non-respondent occupant and possible entrapment.”



The passenger, whom Graves identified as a man by the name of Josh Cole, was lying on the ground while a Bartow County Sheriff’s Office deputy performed CPR on him.



He said Patterson appeared to have a facial injury — “something around his mouth, it was causing him to bleed a good bit” — but he was conscious and coherent.



Graves described Patterson as having “a slow, kind of sluggish body mannerism to him” and “slow, slurred speech — I could smell an alcoholic beverage on his breath.”



He also said there was a “freshly labeled” Bud Light can in the passenger side floorboard “that looked like it had been placed there recently.”



Graves also described Patterson’s eyes as “bloodshot and watery” at the time of the accident. He said a subsequent breathalyzer test on the defendant registered positive for alcohol, although he did not specify what Patterson’s blood alcohol content reading was in court.



While Patterson was being loaded into an ambulance, Graves said he performed a horizontal gaze nystagmus (HGN) field sobriety test on him. During that test, Graves said the defendant displayed “six out of the six clues” indicating intoxication.



McCoy disputed Graves’ findings, stating that he believed the defendant’s eye movement could be attributed to several factors, running the gamut from crying to air bag propellant irritants to a possible head injury.



Graves said the defendant did not respond to a question regarding how much alcohol he had consumed, but he did consent to the tests. Continuing, he told the court he believed there was ample evidence to believe the defendant was under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

“I believe it was a combination of the two, just judging from the odor of the alcohol, the positive [preliminary breath test, or PBT] and the six clues,” he said. “But getting the number I received on the PBT was not consistent with a full set of six clues, it was basically lower than what would cause the six clues … I thought there would be something else onboard, as far as another [central nervous system]-depressant, inhalant or dissociative anesthetic.”

Regardless, due to a combination of driving behavior, road evidence and the statements from an individual whose vehicle was almost struck by Patterson — not to mention the results of the field sobriety tests — Graves said he certainly believed the defendant “was less safe to drive.”

Graves informed Patterson that he was being arrested, but the GSP trooper told the court he was unable to handcuff the defendant while he was on a gurney. “With the medical attention, I didn’t want to get in the way of that,” he said.

Graves said the defendant consented to a blood test “multiple times,” but when Patterson arrived at Cartersville Medical Center, he said hospital staff refused to perform the draws.

“They thought he wasn’t willfully consenting to the tests because of his injuries,” Graves said. “I was told by them directly — the medical personnel directly to me — that they didn’t want to draw it, even with his consent, because they didn’t think he was fully able to give consent.”

Rather, Graves said CMC personnel wouldn’t do any kind of blood tests on Patterson until they received a search warrant.

Graves then had a video conference with an on-call magistrate court judge, who approved the warrant; hospital personnel subsequently agreed to do the draw.

And that’s where McCoy took issue.

“They never should have drawn the man’s blood to begin with based on this search warrant,” he said. “The search warrant, in and of itself, is defective."

Essentially, McCoy argued that Graves did not give the magistrate judge who ordered the search warrant enough information to meet the threshold of “probable cause.”

And Judge Smith agreed.

“Search warrant affidavits have to be present and complete with facts to support the conclusion that a search warrant is warranted,” Smith said. “Had there been some listing in this application that there was a positive Alco-Sensor screen, that there was an accident involving the swerving over the road that almost caused another driver to have to leave the roadway, that there was the smell of alcohol on or about Mr. Patterson, that there was an HGN test performed and what was found as a result of that HGN test … those are the types of things that would have supplied facts within the four corners of this document.”

Although the GSP trooper told the magistrate judge that the defendant’s eyes were “bloodshot and watery,” that he had slurred speech and that there “were multiple clues on conducting a field sobriety test” — as well as an empty, open container in the vehicle — Smith nonetheless said that was not enough “factual” information to merit a search warrant.

“The open container in the vehicle in this case, with more, could have been a little bit more persuasive to the court,” he said. “‘Multiple signs of impairment’ is a conclusory statement much like that that was given in the affidavit itself; it does not say what types of signs of impairment were given on the field sobriety test.”

Since Patterson worked at the Frank Moore Administration and Judicial Center during his time with the BCSO, Smith said he was aware of who the defendant is. Yet he nonetheless said he did not have “a personal relationship” with the defendant.

“We’ve never been in each other’s homes, we’ve never traveled together, I never attended any social functions with him,” he said. “Other than knowing about his duties here at the courthouse, and that one time seeing him in passing outside these walls, that’s the extent of my relationship with Mr. Patterson.”

Neither the prosecution or the defense, however, took Smith up on his offer to recuse himself from presiding over the case.

While his order will bar potential jurors from hearing about Patterson’s blood tests in court, Smith said it does not mean that the defendant’s case is over.

“There are other charges in this case other than the DUI count,” he said. “The State still has ‘less safe’ charges here, so those may also be considered by the prosecutors.”