State v. Randall, 315 Ga. 198

Police stopped Antonio Randall for failing to maintain his lane; officer smelled alcohol and observed glassy eyes and balance problems. Randall was arrested for DUI.
Officer read the statutory Implied Consent notice for drivers 21+, requested a state-administered blood test, and Randall refused; no blood test was performed.
Randall moved to suppress admission of his refusal; the trial court granted suppression, ruling that OCGA §§ 40-5-67.1(b) and 40-6-392(d) (allowing refusal evidence) unconstitutionally chilled the right to refuse warrantless searches and violated due process.
The State appealed. On appeal the State limited its intended use of refusal evidence to the narrow purpose of explaining the absence of chemical test results at trial.
The Supreme Court of Georgia vacated the trial court’s suppression order as to the constitutional rulings as unnecessary because the parties had narrowed the issue; the Court did not decide the broader constitutional questions.
The Court held the State may introduce refusal evidence only to explain the lack of test results and may not seek a jury instruction authorizing other inferences of guilt; trial court to address any limiting instruction at trial.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (Randall)	Defendant's Argument (State)	Held
Admissibility of refusal evidence as consciousness-of-guilt	Admission punishes exercise of right to refuse warrantless search and violates due process	Refusal evidence is relevant to explain why no test results are offered; public expects testing	Court vacated suppression order and declined to rule on constitutionality; allowed limited use only to explain absence of test results
Whether Implied Consent notice text chills the right to refuse warrantless searches	Trial court: notice text needlessly chills refusal and is unconstitutional	State: issue was not squarely raised below; statutes presumed constitutional	Court vacated trial court’s ruling on this ground for exceeding the scope of the defendant’s challenge and for being unnecessary
Whether jury may be instructed to infer guilt from refusal	Randall: broad use as evidence of guilt is unconstitutional	State limited its use to explaining absence of test results and disclaimed asking for instructions authorizing guilt inferences	Court prohibited seeking an instruction authorizing other inferences; left limited-instruction question to trial court at appropriate time

State v. Brannan, 267 Ga. 315 (Ga. 1996) (statutes carry presumption of constitutionality; courts should avoid unnecessary constitutional rulings)
State v. Frost, 297 Ga. 296 (Ga. 2015) (permitting inference that refusal means test would have shown some presence of intoxicant)
Wessels v. State, 169 Ga. App. 246 (Ga. App. 1983) (refusal evidence relevant to negate jurors’ inference that an unproduced test showed non-intoxicating result)
Taylor v. State, 278 Ga. App. 181 (Ga. App. 2006) (upholding argument that refusal reflects consciousness of impairment or guilt)
Kelly v. State, 242 Ga. App. 30 (Ga. App. 2000) (approving inference that refusal may reflect fear of unfavorable test results)