The U.S. Supreme Court will consider later this month whether to hear an appeal from a man seeking a new trial for an aggravated DUI conviction related to a 2011 crash in Warren County.

The court will consider Jan. 16 if they will hear the appeal of Frank Gideon Whitaker IV, 29, who gave deputies addresses in Tennessee and in Warren County, in a crash that left a woman in a coma for weeks.

Court officials say a decision could be announced shortly after the court conference.

Whitaker argues a blood test used to determine if he was intoxicated when the accident happened was unreliable and the results weren’t provided to the defense for testing. The Mississippi Crime Lab disposed of the blood sample after six months.

In July, the Mississippi Supreme Court split 4-3 over the disposal of the blood sample.

“Failure of the state to ensure preservation of the blood sample used by the state to secure Whitaker’s conviction violated his fundamental right to due process of law,” Justice James Kitchens wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Whitaker is serving a 15-year-sentence in the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility.

Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace has said Whitaker’s truck collided head-on with a vehicle driven by 54-year-old Cynthia M. Grantham on Oct. 21, 2011, in the 2400 block of Oak Ridge Road.

At Whitaker’s trial, several witnesses testified that Whitaker’s northbound 1993 Chevrolet 3500 pickup was traveling at a high rate of speed into a curve, lost control and went airborne before smashing into Grantham’s 2007 GMC Yukon.

She suffered head injuries and a shattered leg and was in a coma at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson for several weeks.

Whitaker was arrested April 23, 2012, after failing to show up for arraignment.