Authorities in southwest Iowa’s Adams County didn’t have to go out of their way to arrest a Corning woman last night. Deputies arrested 41-year-old Jodie Hastings outside of the Sheriff’s Office in Corning, after Hastings’ car hit two vehicles parked in front of the Sheriff’s Office just after 10 P.M., Wednesday.

The legally parked vehicles belonged to a magistrate and an Adams County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher. Hastings was booked in the jail for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and operating a motor vehicle without a valid driver’s license.

She was expected to make her initial appearance before the judge sometime today.

By Ric Hanson, KJAN, Atlantic

The Iowa Supreme Court has turned down a Grinnell man’s request to suppress evidence in his homicide case. Lee Allen Breuer was driving a car that rolled over on Highway 6 east of Newton in Jasper County in November of 2008.

When a deputy arrived he noticed an odor of alcohol. Breuer was taken to the hospital, as was a passenger in the car who later died. Breuer refused a breath test and also refused to give a blood or urine sample to a deputy. Another deputy went to a magistrate, secured a warrant for a blood sample, and then called the deputy at the hospital and told him he was on the way.

The deputy at the hospital told Breuer of the warrant and informed him a blood sample would be taken by force if he did not cooperate. He gave the sample and the warrant arrived at the hospital about 10 minutes later. The blood test found Breuer was over the legal alcohol limit, and Breuer was charged with homicide by vehicle.

He sought to have the sample suppressed as evidence, saying the warrant was not present when the blood sample was taken. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that not having the search warrant physically present when the blood was drawn did not violate Breuer’s constitutional rights, and the blood sample can be used as evidence in his case.

See the ruling here: Breuer PDF

A jury in northwest Iowa Thursday found a man guilty of supplying alcohol to a teenager who was killed in a traffic accident. Twenty-six-year-old Robin Armfield of Hornick was originally charged with supplying alcohol to minor resulting in death, a class D felony.

A Woodbury County jury instead found him guilty of a lesser charge – the serious misdemeanor offense of supplying alcohol to a minor. A sentencing date has not been set, but Armfield faces up to one year in jail.

He was charged in connection with a February 21 crash that killed 17-year-old Mary Katherine Hughes of Salix. Authorities said Hughes drove her car south in the northbound lanes of Interstate 29 and collided head-on with a truck. The driver of the pickup, 23-year-old Ryan Marx of Sioux City, was not seriously injured.