State of Tennessee v. Benjamin Barton

A jury convicted the Defendant, Benjamin Barton, of driving under the influence of an intoxicant (“DUI”), driving with a blood alcohol level in excess of 0.08 percent (“DUI per se”), and reckless driving. The trial court sentenced him to an effective sentence of eleven months and twenty-nine days, with six months to be served in confinement. The Defendant moved for a new trial and for the trial court to reconsider his sentence under Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 35, and the motions were denied. On appeal, the Defendant asserts that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdicts, that he is entitled to a mistrial due to a discovery violation regarding expert testimony on retrograde extrapolation, that the trial court abused its discretion in failing suspend his sentence due to his health, and that there are errors on the judgment forms. We conclude that the Defendant is not entitled to relief on his convictions but that the sentencing forms are in conflict with the trial court’s oral judgments, and we remand for the trial court to correct the forms.