The Supreme Court today got a fourth amendment decision right. In the case, Missouri v McNeely, the Court ruled that the police were required to get a warrant before taking a blood test on a man suspected of a DUI. The ruling is based on a violation of the defendant's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
As technology has marched on, from fingerprints to saliva, breath and blood tests, the boundaries of what is an unreasonable searches of our persons have continually been tested and many would say stretched to the virtual breaking point. Given where the court had been going, there was some real concern that there were going to be very few limits on police powers when it came to taking blood. Thankfully, this case makes clear that those powers are not unlimited. It is also noteworthy that this was an 8-1 ruling with an opinion written by Justice Sotomayor, and the only dissent was, you guessed it, Clarence Thomas.
This case is important because it replaces some real limits on an earlier Supreme Court case in which the court upheld a warrantless DUI blood test. In that earlier case, Schmerber v California, the Court upheld a warrantless blood test on the grounds that the officer could reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency about the potential destruction of evidence.
In the case decided today the Court made clear that if the only potential destruction of evidence is the natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood, then a warrant is required.
Here is the operative paragraph from the court's summary of its decision, which upheld the Missouri state supreme court's ruling that the blood test was unconstitutional:
McNeely’s BAC tested well above the legal limit, and he was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI). He moved to suppress the blood test result, arguing that taking his blood without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court agreed, concluding that the exigency exception to the warrant requirement did not apply because, apart from the fact that McNeely’s blood alcohol was dissipating, no circumstances suggested that the officer faced an emergency. The State Supreme Court affirmed, relying on Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, in which this Court upheld a DWI suspect’s warrantless blood test where the officer “might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which a delay necessary to obtain a warrant under the circumstances, threatened ‘the destruction of evidence,’ ” id., at 770. This case, the state court found, involved a routine DWI investigation where no factors other than the natural dissipation of blood alcohol suggested that there was an emergency, and, thus, the nonconsensual warrantless test violated McNeely's right to be free from unreasonable searches of his person.
Held: The judgment is affirmed.