One of Wellington polo club founder John Goodman’s battles over the blood samples in his DUI manslaughter case ended in defeat Wednesday.
But he’s still contesting the blood results and other issues in a pending appeal of his 2014 trial conviction and 16-year prison sentence in the death of Scott Patrick Wilson, 23.
In this week’s opinion, the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed a state judge’s ruling denying Goodman’s claims that the testing of his blood samples was flawed and led to unreliable readings.
Judge Alan O. Forst wrote Goodman’s argument against state rules for collecting and analyzing blood focused on “a problem that does not exist.”
“We are disappointed with the decision,” Goodman attorneys Elizabeth Parker and Jane Kreusler-Walsh said in a statement. “We are currently evaluating the opinion and weighing our legal options at this time.”
Prosecutors heavily relied on the blood evidence in Goodman’s retrial. The disputed sample was taken three hours after Goodman’s Bentley slammed into Wilson’s Hyundai at a Wellington intersection.
It indicated a blood-alcohol content measuring .177, or more than twice the .08 legal limit to drive, along with traces of hydrocodone Goodman was taking for back pain.
The prosecutors argued the results meant Goodman, now 52, clearly was impaired in the 1 a.m. Feb. 12, 2010 crash. Wilson’s car wound up in a canal, where the engineering graduate from the University of Central Florida drowned.
Goodman testified he guzzled liquor from a bottle at a bar inside a polo player’s barn office after the crash, to soothe the pain of a broken wrist and head trauma.
In a hearing last November, Ann Marie Johnson, the lawyer for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, argued there is nothing wrong with rules used for a state law that forces people suspected of drunken driving to give a blood sample.
But Goodman’s lawyers asked appellate court Judges Martha C. Warner, W. Matthew Stevenson, and Forst, to reverse the state judge’s ruling because state rules fail to ensure scientifically reliable results.
Kreusler-Walsh claimed his sample was flawed and should have been thrown out of court, mainly because the diameter of the needle a Wellington Regional Medical Center nurse used to draw his blood was too small.
Kreusler-Walsh argued this happened as a result of Florida Department of Law Enforcement lacking rules that specify the type of needle to be used or how a tourniquet should be applied during blood draws. The department also does not have regulations for blood analysts to follow to get rid of bad samples, she said.
Goodman’s medical experts had previously testified the tiny needle likely produced clotting and a “compromised” blood sample.
But attorney Johnson had argued the department makes sure blood collection methods produce accurate and reliable blood alcohol test results. Clotted blood doesn’t make a sample unreliable, she explained.
Also, the needle size is meaningless and doesn’t affect blood-alcohol results, so the reliability of samples is not in question, Johnson said, pointing to expert testimony presented in June 2014 to state Administrative Law Judge William F. Quattlebaum.
This judge rejected Goodman’s petition, finding, “The omission from the rule of a requirement related to needle gauge and tourniquet usage is of no material consequence.”
In Wednesday’s opinion, Judge Forst wrote Goodman’s appeal failed to show there are problems with the state rules that affect the reliability of blood samples.
Forst also wrote that, “we have failed to locate, a single rule across the country that regulates the exact size of needle that must be used.”
Had Goodman prevailed in the blood appeal, it likely would have resulted in his getting a third trial. And other DUI defendants across the state could have argued similar grounds in their cases.
mjfreeman@tribpub.com, 561-243-6642 or Twitter @MarcJFreeman