State v. Shelton Refines Sufficiency Analysis in Drugged Driving Case

The court of appeals decided State v. Shelton, ___ N.C. App. ___ (2019) yesterday, determining that the evidence of the defendant’s impairment was sufficient when he took impairing drugs hours before crashing his vehicle into a pedestrian after his brakes failed. Two aspects of the case are of particular interest: (1) the court’s evaluation of the sufficiency of the evidence in a case where no one opined that the defendant was impaired; and (2) how the State obtained evidence that drugs remained in the defendant’s system in the first place.   The morning of. When he awoke at 6:30 a.m. on July 22, 2015, Brian Shelton took his prescription oxycodone. He then drove his pickup truck from his home in Sneads Ferry to his job in Surf City. At 11 a.m., Shelton took tramadol, another drug that he had been prescribed. Both drugs had been prescribed with labels warning of their potential to cause drowsiness and dizziness and advising that care be taken when operating a vehicle. The crash. As Shelton was driving home from work at 5:10 p.m., the sports utility vehicle (SUV) in front of him slowed to make a left turn. Shelton applied his brakes, but they failed. Shelton swerved to the right to avoid hitting the SUV and ran off the road. As he did so, he struck and killed Rhonda Anderson who had been standing near a group of mailboxes about three feet from the side of the road. The force of the impact caused Anderson’s [...]