By Jessie Stensland / South Whidbey Record
WHIDBEY ISLAND — The state Court of Appeals recently affirmed the conviction of a woman who caused a 2015 head-on crash that killed Whidbey Island resident Timothy Keil.
Michelle D. Nichols, also from Whidbey, will be ordered to serve a sentence of more than 10 years in prison unless the state Supreme Court intervenes.
An earlier plea agreement was reached in Island County in the case, which pivoted on the admissibility of blood evidence. The blood was drawn without a search warrant while Nichols was unconscious.
The appeals court on Aug. 13 found the blood draw was lawful. It ruled that investigators had probable cause because Nichols drove into the other car without braking, a firefighter smelled alcohol on her, she told a nurse she had been drinking and she had a previous DUI.
The crash happened Feb. 14, 2015, on Highway 525. Nichols’s femur was fractured, according to court documents. She was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Investigators had trouble communicating because of a lack of cell service in the area, delaying any application for a search warrant.
A Washington State Patrol trooper traveled to Harborview to see if he could smell alcohol on Nichols. He arrived to find she was unconscious, was intubated and had been given blood transfusions. She was about to go into surgery, so investigators decided to draw her blood before the chance was lost.
Tests showed that three hours and 51 minutes after the collision, her blood-alcohol level was 0.11 percent, higher than the legal limit.
During a bench trial, Island County Superior Court Judge Vickie Churchill found Nichols guilty of vehicular homicide and sentenced her to the maximum allowed by state law.
Nichols appealed.
The defense argued that the blood results were inadmissible because the prosecution couldn’t show it was her blood that was tested, due to transfusions she received before the blood draw. The appeals court ruled it was her blood, under the law, simply because it came from her body.
Island County Chief Criminal Prosecutor Eric Ohme said it appears that the case was the first in which the issue of a blood draw after a transfusion was challenged.
This story originally appeared in the South Whidbey Record, a sibling paper of The Daily Herald.
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