Felony DUI stands up to court scrutiny

MAT-SU — A state appellate court ruling Friday has upheld the felony drunken driving conviction of a man arrested in Talkeetna in 2008.

Alen K. Theodore was convicted at trial of drunken driving. The case dates back to Jan. 5, 2008, when two brothers living in Talkeetna called Alaska State Troopers to say there was a pickup stuck in their driveway.

Theodore was quickly arrested and troopers set to work impounding his pickup. The keys Theodore had didn’t fit the pickup’s ignition, but the investigating officer turned the ignition anyway and found that he actually didn’t need a key.

“Trooper (Andrew) Adams was checking to see if the truck could be shifted out of park to avoid damaging the truck during the impound process,” Judge Robert Coats wrote in the ruling.

But Theodore’s defense at trial was that he didn’t drive the truck. Someone else did, and when it got stuck he left, taking the keys and promising to return, which he never did.

The fact that Adams could turn the ignition without a key, then, would seem to make it more plausible that Theodore could have been the driver. His attorney moved to have that evidence thrown out, saying Adams didn’t have the right to search the truck. Superior Court Judge Kari Kristiansen shot that motion down.

“Judge Kristiansen’s findings are supported by the record. It was reasonable for Trooper Adams to check that the vehicle could be taken out of park before calling a tow company,” Coats wrote.

Adams had the right to search the pickup since Theodore was under arrest at the time and the law allows for searches of “places and articles within the passenger compartment where one would reasonably expect to find … (physical) evidence (of the crime),” Coats writes, citing a 2010 appeals court ruling.

Theodore’s attorney also argued that the state didn’t prove his client was drunk. Coats makes short work of that claim. He notes that Theodore refused to perform field sobriety tests and that one of the brothers whose driveway the pickup got stuck in testified that Theodore wasn’t staggering or slurring his words.

But, Coats writes, there is a pile of evidence on the other side — an empty beer can inside the truck and Theodore’s admission to drinking four beers.

“Additionally, Theodore was disoriented — he did not know where he was. He told the officer he was at a friend’s house on Montana Creek Road, but he actually was in the yard of a private residence six and a half miles north of there. And, while driving, he hit a woodpile, drove the truck into a hole, and the (brothers) were afraid he was going to hit their vehicle that was parked in the yard,” Coats wrote.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.