Case Title: Idaho v. Halseth

Citation: 

Docket Number: 41169

State: idaho

Court: Idaho Supreme Court (criminal)

Date: 2014-12-02T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF IDAHO 
 
Docket No. 41169-2013 
 
STATE OF IDAHO, 
 
Plaintiff-Appellant, 
 
v. 
 
DENNIS JOHN HALSETH, 
 
Defendant-Respondent. 
 
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Boise, September 2014 Term 
 
2014 Opinion No. 127  
 
Filed: December 2, 2014 
 
Stephen W. Kenyon, Clerk 
 
 
 
Appeal from the District Court of the First Judicial District of the State of Idaho, 
in and for Kootenai County.  Hon. Benjamin R. Simpson, District Judge. 
 
The order of the district court is affirmed. 
 
Kenneth K. Jorgensen, Deputy Attorney General, Boise, argued for appellant. 
 
Justin M. Curtis, Deputy State Appellate Public Defender, Boise, argued for respondent. 
 
 
EISMANN, Justice. 
 
This is an appeal out of Kootenai County from an order granting a motion to suppress the 
results of a warrantless blood draw from a driver suspected of driving under the influence of 
alcohol on the ground that an implied consent statute is not an exception to the warrant 
requirement announced in Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. ___, 133 S.Ct. 1552 (2013).  We 
affirm the granting of the motion to suppress. 
  
I. 
Factual Background. 
 
On November 5, 2012, a Post Falls police officer was searching for a gray truck with 
stolen Washington license plates.  He located and began to follow the truck, and he confirmed 
that the license plate on it was stolen.  The truck stopped in a parking lot in Post Falls, and the 
officer told the driver, later identified as Dennis Halseth (Defendant), to stay in the vehicle.  
 
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Defendant drove away, with the officer in pursuit.  However, the officer had to terminate the 
pursuit when his vehicle was struck by another vehicle. 
 
Defendant was stopped and arrested in Washington by a Washington state trooper.  The 
trooper asked Defendant to complete voluntary field sobriety tests, and Defendant refused.  The 
trooper then transported Defendant to a hospital in Spokane, Washington, to have his blood 
drawn for evidentiary testing.  Defendant protested, stating:  “You can’t take my blood!  I 
refused!  How can you just take it without permission?”  Despite his protests, the hospital 
technician drew blood samples from each of Defendant’s arms.  No search warrant was obtained 
prior to the blood draws. 
 
The State of Idaho charged Defendant with several crimes including driving while under 
the influence of alcohol, which would be a felony because of his prior convictions.  Defendant 
moved to suppress the evidence on the ground that he did not consent to the warrantless search.  
He did not contend that the trooper lacked probable cause to believe that he had been driving 
under the influence of alcohol. 
 In light of the decision of the United States Supreme Court in McNeely the State did not 
argue that the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream was an exigent circumstance 
justifying a warrantless search, nor did it argue that there were any other exigent circumstances 
justifying the search.1  The State argued that both Washington and Idaho had statutes providing 
that persons who drove on public roads impliedly consented to a test for alcohol concentration in 
their blood; that in State v. Woolery, 116 Idaho 368, 775 P.2d 1210 (1989), this Court held there 
was no legal right to withdraw that implied consent; and that in State v. Diaz, 144 Idaho 300, 160 
P.3d 739 (2007), this Court held that the implied consent included a blood draw.  The district 
court granted the motion to suppress, reasoning that McNeely held that whether a warrantless 
blood test of a person suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol is reasonable must be 
determined based upon the totality of the circumstances in each case and that “it would be 
antithetical to interpret the McNeely opinion as permitting warrantless blood draws simply 
because a state has legislation that allows such action.”  The State timely appealed, and we 
affirm granting of the motion to suppress. 
                                                 
1 In McNeely, the Supreme Court stated that “exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless blood sample may arise 
in the regular course of law enforcement due to delays from the warrant application process.”  Id. at ___, 133 S.Ct. 
at 1563. 
 
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II. 
Analysis. 
 
 
In Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432 (1957), the United States Supreme Court held that 
a warrantless blood draw from a person suspected of driving a motor vehicle while under the 
influence of alcohol did not violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States because that amendment did not apply to the States.  Id. at 434.  The Court also held that 
the blood draw did not violate due process because “there is nothing ‘brutal’ or ‘offensive’ in the 
taking of a sample of blood when done, as in this case, under the protective eye of a physician.”  
Id. at 435.  The Court stated that “[t]he blood test procedure has become routine in our everyday 
life” and that “a majority of our States have either enacted statutes in some form authorizing tests 
of this nature or permit findings so obtained to be admitted in evidence.”  Id. at 436.  The Court 
concluded by stating: 
Furthermore, since our criminal law is to no small extent justified by the 
assumption of deterrence, the individual’s right to immunity from such invasion 
of the body as is involved in a properly safeguarded blood test is far outweighed 
by the value of its deterrent effect due to public realization that the issue of 
driving while under the influence of alcohol can often by this method be taken out 
of the confusion of conflicting contentions. 
 
Id. at 439-40.   Based upon Breithaupt and other authorities, this Court held in State v. Bock, 80 
Idaho 296, 328 P.2d 1065 (1958), that where intoxication was evidence of reckless disregard in 
an involuntary manslaughter case arising out of the operation of a motor vehicle, “the accused 
has no constitutional right to refuse to submit to a reasonable search and examination of his 
person, including an examination of his blood in the manner authorized by law.”  Id. at 306, 328 
P.2d at 1071. 
 
The United States Supreme Court later changed its mind regarding the application of the 
Fourth Amendment to the States, and in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the Court held that 
the Fourth Amendment and the Court’s exclusionary rule did apply to the States.  However, in 
Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770-71 (1966), the Court held that the natural dissipation 
of alcohol in the bloodstream justified a warrantless blood draw as an appropriate incident to the 
lawful arrest of a person for the offense of driving while under the influence of alcohol.  In 
reliance on Schmerber, this Court held in State v. Woolery, 116 Idaho 368, 775 P.2d 1210 
 
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(1989), that “the destruction of the evidence by metabolism of alcohol in the blood provides an 
inherent exigency which justifies the warrantless search.”  Id. at 370, 775 P.2d at 1212. 
 
The United States Supreme Court again changed its mind, and in McNeely it held that 
“the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every 
case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant.”  569 U.S. at ___, 133 S.Ct. 
at 1568.  The Court did not explicitly address the efficacy of implied consent statutes.  That issue 
is now before us. 
In State v. Diaz, 144 Idaho 300, 160 P.3d 739 (2007), we affirmed the denial of a motion 
to suppress the results of a blood test by a driver who verbally protested the blood draw.  He 
argued “that death or serious bodily injury is required to justify an involuntary blood draw under 
the exigency exception to the warrant requirement.”  Id. at 302, 160 P.3d at 741.  We held that 
exigency was not the only applicable exception to the warrant requirement, but that consent is 
also a well-recognized exception.  Id.  We concluded that the driver had already given his 
consent under Idaho’s implied consent statute, which included consent to a blood draw.  Id. at 
303, 160 P.3d at 742.  However, in Diaz the driver did not raise the issue of whether any implied 
consent based upon the statute could be withdrawn or was an exception to the warrant 
requirement. 
 
In Aviles v. State, 385 S.W.3d 110 (Tex. App. 2012), the Court of Appeals of Texas 
upheld the denial of a motion to suppress evidence of the blood specimen of a defendant charged 
with felony driving while intoxicated even though the blood sample was obtained without 
consent and without a warrant.  The sole basis of the court’s decision was that “[t]he Texas 
Transportation Code expands the State’s ability to search and seize without a warrant, providing 
implied consent to obtain blood samples from persons suspected of driving while intoxicated, in 
certain circumstances, even without a search warrant.”  Id. at 115.  The United States Supreme 
Court granted the defendant’s petition for a writ of certiorari, and it vacated the judgment and 
remanded the case for further consideration in light of McNeely.  Aviles v. Texas, ___ U.S. ___, 
134 S.Ct. 902 (2014).  There is no logical reason for the Court’s action unless a majority 
concluded that Texas’s implied consent statute did not justify a warrantless blood draw. 
 
In McNeely, the Court stated:  “The State properly recognizes that the reasonableness of a 
warrantless search under the exigency exception to the warrant requirement must be evaluated 
based on the totality of the circumstances.”  133 S.Ct. at 1560.  The State contended that 
 
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“whenever an officer has probable cause to believe an individual has been driving under the 
influence of alcohol, exigent circumstances will necessarily exist because BAC evidence is 
inherently evanescent.”  Id.  The Court rejected that proposed per se rule and stated that it “fails 
to account for advances in the 47 years since Schmerber was decided that allow for the more 
expeditious processing of warrant applications, particularly in contexts like drunk-driving 
investigations where the evidence offered to establish probable cause is simple.”  Id. at 1561-62.  
The Court noted, “Well over a majority of States allow police officers or prosecutors to apply for 
search warrants remotely through various means, including telephonic or radio communication, 
electronic communication such as e-mail, and video conferencing.”  Id. at 1562. It stated that 
“technological developments that enable police officers to secure warrants more quickly, and do 
so without undermining the neutral magistrate judge’s essential role as a check on police 
discretion, are relevant to an assessment of exigency. That is particularly so in this context, 
where BAC evidence is lost gradually and relatively predictably.”  Id. at 1562-63. 
 
The Court was aware of the magnitude of the drunk driving problem.  However, it stated 
that “the general importance of the government’s interest in this area does not justify departing 
from the warrant requirement without showing exigent circumstances that make securing a 
warrant impractical in a particular case.”  Id. at 1565.  The majority in McNeely did mention 
implied consent laws, including Missouri’s.  It did not do so, however, in the context of 
obtaining a blood sample from the driver to use as evidence in a criminal prosecution.  It referred 
to such laws as one type of “a broad range of legal tools to enforce their drunk-driving laws and 
to secure BAC evidence without undertaking warrantless nonconsensual blood draws.”  Id. at 
1566.  The Court stated that the efficacy of those laws was the consequences imposed when a 
driver withdrew consent.  The Court stated, “Such laws impose significant consequences when a 
motorist withdraws consent; typically the motorist’s driver’s license is immediately suspended or 
revoked, and most States allow the motorist’s refusal to take a BAC test to be used as evidence 
against him in a subsequent criminal prosecution.”  Id. (emphasis added). 
 
Considering the Court’s action in Aviles and its reasoning and statements in McNeely, we 
hold that an implied consent statute such as Washington’s and Idaho’s does not justify a 
warrantless blood draw from a driver who refuses to consent, as did Aviles, or objects to the 
blood draw, as did Defendant in this case.  Consent to a search must be voluntary.  Schneckloth 
v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 232-33 (1973).  Inherent in the requirement that consent be 
 
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voluntary is the right of the person to withdraw that consent.  See McNeely, 569 U.S. at ___, 133 
S.Ct. at 1566 (recognizing that a motorist can withdraw consent).    By objecting to the blood 
draw, Defendant withdrew his implied consent.  Therefore, the district court did not err in 
granting the motion to suppress. 
 
III. 
Conclusion. 
 
 
The order granting Respondent’s motion to suppress is affirmed. 
 
 
Chief Justice BURDICK, Justices J. JONES, HORTON and Senior Justice Pro Tem 
WALTERS CONCUR.