A Carter County man is now serving a jail sentence for vehicular homicide following a ruling issued by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals.

Micah Cates, 25, of Elizabethton, turned himself in at the Carter County Detention Center on Monday morning to begin serving an eight-year prison sentence. Cates was convicted by a Carter County jury in March 2014 of vehicular homicide by intoxication. He was sentenced to serve eight years in prison during a sentencing hearing in May 2014. Cates was determined to be a “standard” offender by the court, and therefore must serve 30 percent of his sentence before being considered eligible for parole.

The charge against Cates stemmed from an August 2012 single-vehicle accident on Milligan Highway. Cates, who was driving, suffered serious injury in the crash while his passenger, 20-year-old Tanner Lee Perkins, died as a result of his injuries.

According to testimony during the trial, Cates had a blood alcohol content of 0.14, nearly twice the legal limit, and was estimated to be driving  “at least” 90 mph when he lost control of the car and was traveling 75 to 85 mph at the time of impact.

Cates appealed the verdict to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals which in September 2015 issued an opinion vacating his conviction based on what it considered a trial court error when the judge presiding over the case allowed results from a warrantless blood draw showing Cates blood alcohol content at the time of the crash to be entered into evidence.

The Appellate Court’s ruling centered around a blood sample which was obtained by officers investigating the crash without Cates’ consent for the blood draw and without a search warrant.

Cates’ attorney, Steve Finney, had sought to suppress the results of testing on that blood sample from being entered into evidence but following a suppression hearing Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood ruled the results were admissible at trial.

During the suppression hearing, Greg Workman, who was at the time a Captain with the Elizabethton Police Department, testified he and other officers responded to the scene of a single-vehicle crash on Milligan Highway around 1:47 a.m. on August 14, 2012. When he arrived, Workman said he saw a white BMW “intertwined with a metal pole in the Milligan Grocery parking lot” and an individual later determined to be Cates lying outside of the driver’s side door of the car. Workman said he saw another individual in the vehicle but was not able to determine how many other people might be inside.

Workman testified he spoke with Cates who was “obviously in pain” and “confused.” He said Cates could not recall how many people had been in the car or the identity of the person in the passenger seat, who was later determined to be Perkins. Workman noted that Cates appeared to have an open fracture to his left leg.

As part of his testimony, Workman said he could smell the odor of an alcoholic beverage but could not immediately determine if it was coming from Cates or the vehicle. Because of Cates’ injuries, he was transported by ambulance to the Johnson City Medical Center. Workman said the seriousness of Cates’ injuries lead officers to believe he may have to undergo surgery and any medications administered to treat the patient could interfere with the results of a blood test.

Workman testified he knew it was a possibility that Cates was driving under the influence and based on the totality of the circumstances he felt that “exigent circumstances existed” and officers needed to collect a blood sample as soon as Cates arrived at the hospital.

The Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that no “exigent circumstances” existed and the results of the blood test were inadmissible.

The case then made its way to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which remanded the case back to the Court of Criminal Appeals with a directive for reconsideration in light of another case ruling by the Supreme Court.

“Relevant to the current remand, this court concluded in the previous appeal that a new trial was necessary because the warrantless blood draw was not justified by exigent circumstances and that the evidence obtained from the blood draw should have been suppressed,” the new opinion issued by the Court of Criminal Appeals in July states. “Upon further review, we conclude that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule permitted the admission of the relevant evidence, and we affirm the judgment of the trial court.”

As part of the reversal opinion, the Court of Criminal Appeals notes several cases which it looked at with similar circumstances as well as a review of state law which was in place at the time of the crash.

“In 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a per se exigency rule for nonconsensual blood tests in suspected DUI cases due to the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream and clarified that exigency ‘must be determined case by case based on the totality of circumstances,” the opinion said, citing the Supreme Court case of Missouri v. McNeely. “However, at the time Captain Workman ordered the warrantless blood draw in 2012, it was permissible under Tennessee law for an officer to order a compulsory warrantless blood draw if the officers suspected a person was driving under the influence of alcohol.”

The reversal by the Court of Criminal Appeals reinstituted Cates conviction and sentencing.

On August 3 an order was filed by the Court of Criminal Appeals in the Carter County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office regarding the court’s finding upon reviewing their previous decision. The filing included an agreed order for Cates to turn himself at the Carter County Sheriff’s Office on Monday, August 7 to begin serving his sentence. According to the Carter County Sheriff’s Office records, officers booked Cates into the jail at 8 a.m. on Monday.