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Page Number: 14.0

10 

MISSOURI v. MCNEELY 

Opinion of the Court 

conducted  warrantless  blood  test.    That,  however,  is  a 
reason  to  decide  each  case  on  its  facts,  as  we  did  in 
Schmerber, not to accept the “considerable overgeneraliza­
tion” that a per se rule would reflect.  Richards, 520 U. S., 
at 393. 

The  context  of  blood  testing  is  different  in  critical  re­
spects  from  other  destruction-of-evidence  cases  in  which 
the  police  are  truly  confronted  with  a  “ ‘now  or  never’ ” 
situation.  Roaden v. Kentucky, 413 U. S. 496, 505 (1973).
In  contrast  to,  for  example,  circumstances  in  which  the 
suspect  has  control  over  easily  disposable  evidence,  see 
Georgia  v.  Randolph,  547  U. S.  103,  116,  n. 6  (2006); 
Cupp,  412  U. S.,  at  296,  BAC  evidence  from  a  drunk­
driving suspect naturally dissipates over time in a gradual 
and  relatively  predictable  manner.    Moreover,  because  a 
police  officer  must  typically  transport  a  drunk-driving
suspect  to  a  medical  facility  and  obtain  the  assistance  of
someone  with  appropriate  medical  training  before  con­
ducting  a  blood  test,  some  delay  between  the  time  of  the 
arrest  or  accident  and  the  time  of  the  test  is  inevitable 
regardless of whether police officers are required to obtain 
a  warrant.  See  State  v.  Shriner,  751  N. W.  2d  538,  554 
(Minn.  2008)  (Meyer,  J.,  dissenting).  This  reality  under­
mines the force of the State’s contention, endorsed by the 
dissent,  see  post,  at  3  (opinion  of  THOMAS,  J.),  that  we 
should  recognize  a  categorical  exception  to  the  warrant
requirement  because  BAC  evidence  “is  actively  being 
destroyed  with every  minute that passes.”  Brief for Peti­
tioner 27.  Consider, for example, a situation in which the 
warrant  process  will  not  significantly  increase  the  delay 
before  the  blood  test  is  conducted  because  an  officer  can 
take  steps  to  secure  a  warrant  while  the  suspect  is  being 
transported  to  a  medical  facility  by  another  officer.    In 
such a circumstance, there would be no plausible justifica­
tion for an exception to the warrant requirement. 

The State’s proposed per se rule also fails to account for