Justin WhaleyAn attorney for a former Hamilton County reserve deputy accused of being under the influence during a fatal car wreck wants to suppress any evidence obtained from a search warrant affidavit.
Attorney Lee Davis, who is representing Justin Whaley, the 38-year-old man who faces nine crimes in connection with the fatal July 3, 2018, wreck of James Brumlow, wrote in a motion filed Monday that authorities didn’t establish probable cause to draw Whaley’s blood and test for alcohol.
On July 3, around 5:40 a.m., Brumlow, 36, was driving to work on Highway 111 when he was struck by Whaley going the wrong way on a divided highway separated by a cement barrier, prosecutors say. After the collision, Whaley called 911 and, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by a Soddy-Daisy police officer, told dispatchers that he’d consumed alcohol the night before.
From there, officer Jeremy Wright got permission from Marty Lasley, the Soddy-Daisy magistrate, to test Whaley’s blood. That happened about four hours after the incident, and Whaley’s blood alcohol content came back as .02, according to court documents.
But Wright’s search warrant affidavit was too sparse on the details to establish probable cause of intoxication, Davis wrote in his motion. The officer wrote that Whaley’s body odor smelled of “an unknown intoxicant,” Davis wrote. But he didn’t detail when Whaley drank alcohol, how much he drank, or how many hours had passed, Davis said. He also didn’t include any physical description of what Whaley was doing or any mention of a field sobriety test, Davis said.