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Managing editor

A city of Coon Rapids case involving a gross misdemeanor DWI charge caught the attention of the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

In a unanimous opinion, a three-judge court of appeals panel affirmed an Anoka County District Court conviction of a 37-year-old woman for second-degree DWI in a case prosecuted by the Coon Rapids City Attorney’s Office.

But the appeals court decision was a “published opinion,” which means that the court considered it an “important and complex case.”

The appellate ruling will be considered and used by courts faced with similar issues in the future and it will be published in books found in most law libraries, according to the appeals court website.

Karri Ann Fiermoen waived a jury trial on two second-degree DWI charges brought by the Coon Rapids City Attorney’s Office Feb. 25, 2008.

But in a court trial July 21, 2009, in which the facts were stipulated by both prosecution and defense attorneys, Judge Jenny Walker-Jasper found Fiermoen guilty of one of the two gross misdemeanor counts.

Fiermoen was placed on unsupervised probation for four years and jailed for two months and 28 days.

Probation conditions included completion of treatment and aftercare, attend AA, random urinalysis and breathalyser testing and no use of mood-altering chemicals or alcohol.

The issue before both the district court and the appeals court panel, to which Fiermoen appealed her conviction, was whether Fiermoen’s blood-test results establishing the driver’s alcohol concentration test should have been suppressed because the blood was drawn by a person who did not meet the requirements for doing so under the civil implied-consent law.

In his appearance before the appeals court, Assistant City Attorney Doug Johnson argued that the civil implied-consent law at issue did not apply to the criminal DWI proceeding.

The appeals court agreed. Judge Wilhemina Wright writing for the appeals court ruled that suppression is not mandated in criminal proceedings.

According to the appeals court decision, Fiermoen after being stopped by Coon Rapids Police performed poorly on three field sobriety tests, then blew a .273 on the preliminary breath test.

But when she was taken to the police station, Fiermoen failed to provide an adequate breath sample and agreed to submit a blood sample for testing at the hospital.

This was taken by a hospital technician and the test also showed a .273 alcohol concentration.

The problem was that the hospital technician who took the blood sample did not meet the qualifications spelled out in the civil implied-consent statute.

Indeed, at the civil implied-consent hearing in Anoka County District Court, Walker-Jasper rescinded the revocation of Fiermoen’s license on the qualification issue.

But her motion in the criminal case to suppress the results of the test was denied as well as a motion for reconsideration by another judge, not Walker-Jasper.

According to Wright’s appeals court ruling, the issue before the court was to determine the applicability, if any, of the civil implied-consent requirements for blood-test evidence to a district court’s decision on the admissibility of a blood sample and alcohol concentration test in a criminal DWI proceeding.

Prior to 1984 the implied-consent admissibility law also applied to criminal cases, but the Minnesota Legislature in 1984 changed the DWI statute to take out that language, Wright wrote.

“Subsequent to the 1984 amendment, we have consistently held that compliance with the testing procedure of the implied-consent law is not a prerequisite for the admissibility of test results in a criminal DWI proceeding,” she wrote.

Moreover, Wright stated that Fiermoen did not allege any police wrongdoing that would have led to any infringement of her constitutional rights.

Besides the professional-occupation requirements for obtaining the blood sample, “Fiermoen does not contest that the blood sample was otherwise legally obtained,” according to Wright.

Peter Bodley is at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it