The Oregon Court of Appeals threw out a DUII conviction on Thursday, Aug. 13, after ruling that a Washington County sheriff's deputy delivered a Miranda warning so fast at an Intel parking garage in Hillsboro that three appellate judges couldn't understand it on body camera video.

Deputy Trever M. Cooley arrested Alex Gerkin, a Vancouver, Washington, resident, on July 2, 2022, after another deputy in a plane using a thermal camera spotted Gerkin riding his motorcycle at speeds up to 115 mph on U.S. 26. Cooley handcuffed Gerkin at the Intel garage and read him his rights from his phone in eight seconds, speaking at more than 400 words per minute without pausing between rights or looking at Gerkin, according to OregonLive.

Gerkin's first response: "Huh?"

Only when Cooley repeated, "I said, do you understand your rights?" did Gerkin answer, "Yes, sir."

Washington County Circuit Judge Jannelle Factora Wipper found that response sufficient at trial and convicted Gerkin of DUII (cannabis) and reckless driving. He was sentenced in June 2024 to two years of bench probation, two days in jail, 60 hours of community service and a one-year license suspension.

But the three-judge appellate panel, Presiding Judge Darleen Ortega, Judge Kristina Hellman and Judge Anna M. Joyce, disagreed. All three said they could not understand the warning when they reviewed the body camera footage.

"It was like they were almost provided in a different language, and that language was Mumble," Judge Joyce said during oral argument in May 2026.

In her written opinion issued Aug. 13, Joyce wrote that the warnings "obscured the substance of the rights that Cooley was constitutionally required to communicate to defendant and could not have 'reasonably conveyed' the substance of the rights to defendant."

The ruling suppressed all statements Gerkin made to officers, along with field sobriety test results and drug-recognition expert testimony. The court overturned the DUII conviction; the status of the reckless driving conviction was not addressed in available records.

The ruling establishes that speed and intelligibility determine whether a Miranda warning is constitutionally valid in Oregon, not just whether the officer recited the correct words.

Cooley, hired by the Sheriff's Office in 2018, is no minor figure in local DUII enforcement. He was named Oregon's DUII Enforcement Officer of the Year in 2020, 2022 and 2024, and the Washington County Sheriff's Office confirmed on Instagram in April that he received the same award for 2025. He made more than 2,000 traffic stops in 2025 alone. He is due for a promotion to corporal at the end of August.

Cooley did not return messages seeking comment, according to OregonLive. The Washington County Sheriff's Office had not publicly commented on the ruling as of Aug. 13.

Whether the case will be retried or dismissed remains unclear. The Washington County District Attorney's office has not indicated whether it will seek Oregon Supreme Court review.