Attorney For Ryan Quinton Wants To Suppress Evidence

The attorney for the Jasper man facing charges in the single-vehicle accident that killed his new bride wants to suppress evidence collected by a Georgia State Patrol tooper.

Court records show Attorney Scott T. Poole is petitioning the court to suppress blood toxicology results from samples taken from Ryan Patrick Quinton while he was being treated at Northside Hospital-Cherokee on Dec. 29, the night of the accident.

Kali Shay Quinton died in the accident, which occurred along Georgia Highway 5 after the couple’s wedding reception at The Wheeler House in Ball Ground.

According to the motion, Quinton, 28, was asked to consent to a blood draw for the purposes of drug and alcohol testing by a trooper at the hospital. Quinton reportedly consented to the draw, but the attorney argues “it is unknown” if implied consent was read to Quinton or a written consent form was signed by his defendant.

Quinton’s attorney argues his defendant was under ”physical and emotional trauma as a result of being injured, was grieving over the loss of his wife and was unable to make a knowing and voluntary decision regarding whether or not to consent to the blood draw.”

He also alleges the state trooper did not communicate ”exactly or substantially” the statutory implied consent law and did not have a valid legal reason to suspect Quinton was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

He also is requesting the court toss evidence obtained from a search warrant, which included medical records and containers of Quinton’s blood and urine.

The search warrant, Poole argues in the motion, did not establish valid probable cause, a “valid nexus between any purported criminal activity and/or the existence of the items attempting to be seized at the location to be searched” and that Quinton did not consent to the seizure of anything relating to his treatment at the hospital while he was a patient.

No court date has been set to hear the motion.

Quinton, 28, was indicted in June by a Cherokee County grand jury on three counts of homicide by vehicle in the first degree charges.

Quinton, who lives in Jasper, was originally charged by the Georgia State Patrol with laying drags, DUI, weaving over roadway, reckless driving and vehicular homicide in the single-vehicle crash.

“We charged him with vehicular homicide in three alternative ways — DUI per se, DUI less safe and reckless driving,” Blue Ridge Judicial Circuit District Attorney Shannon Wallace previously told Patch. “If he is convicted of all three, he can only be sentenced on one count.”

According to the indictment, Quinton allegedly “intentionally and unnecessarily caused the vehicle he was driving to move in a zig-zag course,” forcing the vehicle to venture into the wrong lane.

The vehicle then traveled down an embankment, overturned and Kail Dobson was ejected from the vehicle.

Ryan Quinton told authorities he tried to avoid hitting a dog in the roadway when he lost control of the vehicle. The car, a 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, traveled off the road, overturned and ejected Quinton’s wife before it came to rest with the woman trapped under the vehicle.

She died at the scene of the accident.

In May, Quinton was arrested in Pickens County on driving under the influence, failure to stop at a stop sign and failure to drive within a single lane charges.

That arrested prompted the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office to revoke his bond and arrest Quinton on a bench warrant.

(Photo: Ryan Patrick Quinton, 28. Credit: Cherokee Sheriff’s Office.