Opinion ID: 2634655
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: We Read AS 28.35.031(g), as It Applies to Laura Blank, To Incorporate the Exigent Circumstances Standard for Warrantless Searches.

Text: The superior court upheld the search of Laura Blank's breath under AS 28.35.031(g). This statute authorizes a law enforcement officer who has reasonable grounds to believe that [a] person was operating or driving a motor vehicle in this state that was involved in an accident causing death or serious physical injury to another person to administer blood or breath alcohol tests to the person based on the individual's implied consent. The court of appeals held that AS 28.35.031(g) violates the search and seizure provisions of the federal and Alaska constitutions because it allows the officer to administer the test(s) without any individualized suspicion that the driver was impaired. [31] Noting that it could construe a statute to avoid constitutional concerns, the court of appeals declined to read subsection .031(g) to require that police have probable cause to believe the tested driver has committed a crime because the court appropriately recognized that such a requirement would not satisfy Layland. [32] The state argues that we should read Schmerber's probable cause requirements into the statute to avoid any constitutional infirmity. Because we have overruled Layland, it no longer constrains a court considering whether subsection .031(g) can be given a narrowing construction that avoids constitutional problems. Whether to apply a narrowing construction to avoid holding a statute unconstitutional is a question of law to which we bring our independent judgment. For several reasons, we choose to decide this issue, rather than remand it to the court of appeals, notwithstanding the expertise that court brings to the field of criminal procedure and law: the issue raises a pure question of law; if we were to remand the issue, no matter what the result below, one of the parties might feel compelled to ask us to review the decision; it is more expeditious for us to reach this issue now; further, a ruling on this issue now will guide the parties and the superior court in considering the exigency issue on remand and may advance the ultimate termination of the case. This court will narrowly construe statutes in order to avoid constitutional infirmity where that can be done without doing violence to the legislature's intent. [33] The text of AS 28.35.031(g) is neither explicitly nor implicitly inconsistent with the narrowing construction we give it here. [34] The statute implicitly contemplates warrantless searches under circumstances that may be inherently exigent and that may consequently render warrantless searches constitutional. We therefore construe subsection.031(g) to be constitutional in context of warrantless searches for breath or blood in accident cases involving death or serious physical injury when probable cause to search exists and the search falls within a recognized exception to the warrant requirement. So construed, subsection .031(g) has the effect of specifying that such tests are authorized under Alaska's implied consent statute and therefore comply with the rule set out in Geber, [35] which might otherwise exclude the test results as unauthorized, even if they were constitutionally obtained. In context of the facts presented in this case, we choose to construe subsection.031(g) to incorporate, in addition to the statutory requirements, the exigent circumstances requirements discussed in Schmerber. Thus, if exigent circumstances were present in this case, the warrantless search was valid. [36]