It has not been long since my last cannabis update, but there are some interesting new developments to report, most notably on drug identification and marijuana. Read on for the details. Continue reading
Tag Archives: fletcher
A recent en banc decision from the Supreme Court of Missouri adds to the growing divide among state appellate courts regarding whether the exigency created by the dissipation of blood-alcohol levels is sufficient, by itself, to render a nonconsensual, warrantless blood draw from a person arrested for impaired driving a reasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment. The Missouri high court in State v. McNeely, 2012 WL 135417, __ S.W.3d. __ (January 17, 2012), rejected the State’s argument, premised on Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), that the natural dissipation of blood-alcohol evidence is alone a sufficient exigency to dispense with the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. McNeely viewed Schmerber as requiring special facts in addition to the natural dissipation of alcohol to establish an emergency sufficient to trigger the exigent circumstances exception. In Schmerber , those additional facts included the time delay created by the investigation of the accident and the transportation of the defendant to the hospital.
The defendant in McNeely was stopped for speeding. When the officer noticed signs of intoxication, the routine traffic stop transformed into a DWI investigation. After the defendant performed poorly on field sobriety tests, he was arrested. Once the defendant was secured in the patrol car, the officer asked him if he would submit to a breath test. The defendant refused. The officer then drove directly to the hospital to obtain a sample of defendant’s blood for analysis. The defendant refused to voluntarily provide a sample. Nevertheless, twenty-five minutes after the defendant was stopped, a phlebotomist at the hospital withdrew the defendant’s blood.
The McNeely Court found no special facts of exigency beyond the dissipation of alcohol. Thus, the court determined that the nonconsensual, warrantless blood draw violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights.
McNeely cites appellate court opinions from jurisdictions sharing its view that the exigency exception to the warrant requirement carved out in Schmerber requires a showing of exigencies beyond the evanescence of alcohol, see United States v. Chapel, 55 F.3d 1416 (9th Cir. 1995); State v. Johnson, 744 N.W.2d 340 (Iowa 2008); State v. Rodriguez, 156 P.3d 771 (Utah 2007), as well as opinions from courts considering the rapid dissipation of alcohol by itself a sufficient exigency, see State v. Machuca, 227 P.3d 729, 736 (Or. 2010); State v. Netland, 762 N.W.2d 202 (Minn. 2009); State v. Bohling, 494 N.W.2d 399 (Wis. 1993).
North Carolina appears to fall on the dissipation-plus side of the interpretive divide. In State v. Fletcher, 202 N.C. App. 107 (2010) (discussed here), the court found “the exigency surrounding obtaining a blood sample when blood alcohol level is at issue . . . and the evidence of a probability of significant delay if a warrant were obtained,” to constitute sufficient evidence of exigent circumstances. The court’s consideration of the officer’s testimony about the distance to the magistrate’s office and the potential wait there as well as at the hospital indicates that dissipation alone may not establish an exigency sufficient to excuse the warrant requirement. The Fletcher court also upheld as constitutional G.S. 20-139.1(d1), which provides that if a person charged with an implied consent offense refuses testing, “any law enforcement officer with probable cause may, without a court order, compel the person to provide blood or urine samples for analysis if the officer reasonably believes that the delay necessary to obtain a court order, under the circumstances, would result in the dissipation of the percentage of alcohol in the person’s blood or urine,” characterizing this provision as the state legislature’s “codif[ication] of what constitutes exigent circumstances with respect to DWI’s [sic].” The “under the circumstances” clause in G.S. 20-139.1 appears to reflect the view that dissipation may not, in all circumstances, amount to an exigency.
Category: Motor Vehicles, Search and Seizure, Uncategorized | Tags: blood draws, DWI, fletcher, fourth amendment, schmerber
I’ve blogged before about G.S. 20-139.1(d1). When a DWI arrestee refuses to submit to a test for alcohol, that section allows “any law enforcement officer with probable cause” to “compel the [arrestee, without a search warrant] to provide blood or urine samples for analysis if the officer reasonably believes that the delay necessary to obtain a court order . . . would result in the dissipation” of alcohol in the arrestee’s system.”
I argued in my prior post that in a routine refusal case, an officer should get a search warrant rather than rely on G.S. 20-139.1(d1), which should be used only when circumstances suggest that obtaining a warrant would be unusually time-consuming. Yesterday, the court of appeals decided State v. Fletcher, which confirms my basic point, but also suggests that the courts are willing to allow warrantless blood draws under circumstances that really aren’t that unusual.
The defendant in Fletcher stopped at a checkpoint and exhibited several signs of impairment. He was arrested and taken to an Intoximeter. Compressing the facts a bit, he refused to provide a sample, and the arresting officer took him to the emergency room for a warrantless blood draw, the results of which confirmed his impairment. He moved to suppress the results, arguing that there was nothing unusual about the case that justified a warrantless blood draw, but the trial court denied his motion and the court of appeals affirmed.
The appellate court noted that G.S. 20-139.1(b1) is essentially a statutory codification of the exigent circumstances exception to the search warrant requirement, as applied in the context of blood draws. And it found sufficient exigency in the following facts: (1) the magistrate’s office was 12 miles away; (2) it was often very busy on weekend evenings, meaning that a search warrant application might not be considered immediately; (3) and the emergency room was likewise often very busy on weekend evenings. The officer estimated the total delay associated with going to the magistrate’s office, procuring a warrant, and executing it to be two to three hours. It looks like the trial prosecutor did an excellent job of presenting evidence supporting each aspect of the delay.
Two things stand out about Fletcher. First, the facts here are not extremely unusual. At least for officers who regularly use Intoximeters that aren’t adjacent to a magistrate’s office, all three of the factors present in Fletcher will often be present. So although obtaining a warrant when possible remains advisable, it appears that the court has adopted an expansive view of exigent circumstances in this context. Second, the court specifically rejected the idea that the admissibility of retrograde extrapolation testimony undercuts the exigency, an argument I considered in my earlier post. All in all, it’s an important case, and one that most officers will like.
Category: Procedure, Search and Seizure, Uncategorized | Tags: blood draws, exigent circumstances, fletcher, warrantless searches
