Court Opinion

ID: 9797351
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:18:50.662725+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:54:29.504929
License: Public Domain

FIDEL, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
¶39 The investigating officer, explaining his insistence upon blood testing rather than breath testing, stated, ‘We do blood in the City of Mesa.” To do defendant’s blood, six or seven police officers struggled for almost half an hour to immobilize him on the station-house floor6 while a phlebotomist jabbed a *617needle repeatedly into the back of his left hand. According to the police, the defendant was neither aggressive nor violent; he was not swinging or punching or kicking; he simply refused to hold still. His resistance, however, caused the phlebotomist to lose “vacuum” in the needle, and necessitated many punctures before he could extract the desired two vials of blood. The next day, defendant’s hand was swollen to the size of a grapefruit and he lacked use of his thumb.
¶ 40 This is not an evidence-gathering technique that citizens who value liberty should contemplate in comfort. Nor is it one we should assume the police, who lack clear lines of guidance, are eager to employ. In the “very few states [that] allow the use of reasonable force, at the discretion of the arresting officer,____many law enforcement agencies severely restrict, by department policy, the use of force to secure evidence from within the suspect’s body in drunk driving cases,” reserving such force for cases of death or serious physical injury. Note, “Shed Thou No Blood": The Forcible Removal of Blood Samples from Drunk Driving Suspects, 60 S. Cal. L.Rev. 1115, 1118 (1987) [hereinafter Forcible Removal ]. This restraint on the part of police authorities may reflect in part a desire to reserve for the most serious cases a. practice risky to the police themselves. See infra, ¶ 47.
¶41 The majority, expanding Schmerber and the Fourth Amendment case law, holds forcible blood extraction routinely and constitutionally permissible. I find that the practice is not statutorily permissible, and I regard the constitutional questions addressed by the majority as unnecessary and undesirable to reach. See State v. Yslas, 139 Ariz. 60, 63, 676 P.2d 1118, 1121 (1984) (the court should refrain from addressing constitutional questions unless to do so is indispensable to decision.). Analysis should start with the statutes that permit the police to gather chemical evidence of driving while intoxicated. That is also where analysis should end.
¶42 Our implied consent statute, A.R.S. § 28-1321, both authorizes the gathering of chemical evidence and addresses what shall follow upon a suspect’s “refusal to submit to the test.” The statute is headed, “Implied consent; tests; refusal to submit to test; order of suspension; hearing; review; temporary permit; notification of suspension.” (Emphasis added.) The statute penalizes, and attempts to deter, refusal by imposing a twelve-month suspension of the suspect’s driver’s license. See A.R.S. § 28-1321(B)(D)(2). The statute further states:
If a person under arrest refuses to submit to the test designated by the law enforcement agency as provided in subsection A of this section:
1. The test shall not be given, except as provided in § 28-1388, subsection E or pursuant to a search warrant.
A.R.S. § 28-1321(D)(l) (emphasis added).7 Section 28-1388(E) states in turn:
Notwithstanding any other law, if a law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that a person has violated § 28-1381 and a sample of blood, urine or other bodily substance is taken from that person for any reason, a portion of that sample sufficient for analysis shall be provided to a law enforcement officer if requested for law enforcement purposes.
A.R.S. § 28-1388(E).
¶ 43 When it comes to nonconsensual blood withdrawal, our implied consent law has a prohibitive, not permissive, thrust: with two exceptions the “warrant exception” contained in section 28-1321(D)(l) and the “medical purpose exception” contained in section 28-1388(E)the Arizona legislature has prohibited the police from engaging in a nonconsensual taking of blood.
¶ 44 The medical purpose exception is not implicated in this case, though its narrow terms confirm the legislature’s measured and restrictive approach to the nonconsensual taking of blood. See infra ¶¶ 51-53. The warrant exception, which is implicated in this *618case, authorizes a police officer to initiate a noneonsensual taking of a suspect’s blood upon a magistrate’s finding of probable cause. The statute is silent, however, on the use of force.
¶ 45 The majority construes the statute’s silence as a tacit endorsement of police force in execution of the warrant. The majority bases this conclusion in part upon the legislature’s longstanding and explicit approval of police force to overcome resistance to a residential search warrant. See A.R.S. § 13-3916(B).8 The majority reasons that if reasonable force is permissible to overcome an individual’s resistance to the search of a residence, such force is permissible to overcome resistance to a blood draw.
¶ 46 I disagree, for both physical and textual reasons, that the latter proposition follows from the former. Taking physical reasons first, there is a qualitative difference between intrusion into the residence of a suspect and “surgical intrusion[ ] beneath the [suspect’s] skin.” Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 760, 105 S.Ct. 1611, 84 L.Ed.2d 662 (1985). The latter, the Supreme Court has recognized,
implicate[s] ... most personal and deep-rooted expectations of privacy, and ... Fourth Amendment analysis thus require[s] a discerning inquiry into the facts and circumstances to determine whether the intrusion was justifiable.
Id.; see also Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 767, 86 S.Ct. 1826 (contrasting “intrusions into the human body” with “state interferences with property relationships or private papers”).
¶ 47 There is likewise a substantial difference in the force required to enter a residence and the force required “to restrain an accused to the degree necessary to allow a needle to be inserted into [and maintained within] a vein.” Forcible Removal, 60 S. Cal.L.Rev. at 1133. The present case demon-states not only the sustained and bruising force that may be needed to overcome resistance to a blood withdrawal, but also the substantial risk entailed, and not to the suspect alone: in the extended struggle to restrain this defendant, six or seven police officers faced a risk of puncture by the needle that repeatedly was thrust into defendant’s hand. Asked to explain his assertion that defendant was a threat to police safety, Officer Raz stated, “Because we had open needles.”
[F]orce under such circumstances is difficult to control____ There can be no doubt that the episodes occurring between the resistive drunk and the police officer attempting to secure a blood sample by means of “reasonable force” are likely to be dangerous, unpleasant, undignified, and undesirable from the standpoint of all concerned.
Id. In a time of intense public concern over the spread of infectious disease by blood-contaminated needles, we should not assume that our legislature has chosen by its silence to expose the police to such a risk.
' ¶ 48 Turning to textual analysis, there are sound reasons to conclude that the legislature has not made such a choice. In A.R.S. § 13-3916(B), the legislature addressed itself expressly to the forcible execution of a residential search warrant. Similarly, in A.R.S. § 13-3881 et seq., the legislature addressed itself expressly to the use of force in accomplishing an arrest.9 The presence of these statutes on the books makes conspicuous the absence of a statutory counterpart that authorizes the police to engage in forcible blood extraction. When our legislature wants to approve force, it says so. Had the legislature intended to permit force to overcome resistance to a blood draw, we may infer that it would have enacted a specific statute on that subject. It has not done so to date.
*619¶49 Not only does the majority construe legislative silence in this instance as an uncharacteristically tacit grant of police power to use force; the majority also. construes legislative silence as a tacit repudiation of our supreme court’s longstanding attribution of a contrary purpose to the informed consent law. Almost thirty years ago, the court approved mandatory license suspension as a device intended to “assure[ ] that no physical violence will be directed against a person who refuses [to provide] ... chemical evidence” and to “minimize[ ] the risk that conduct which would ‘shock the conscience of the court’ will occur.” Campbell v. Super. Ct., 106 Ariz. 542, 547-48, 479 P.2d 685, 690-91 (1971). Nine years ago the court reiterated that the purpose of mandatory suspension is to “assure[] that no physical violence or coercion will occur against a person who is noncooperative.” See Sherrill v. Dep’t of Transp., 165 Ariz. 495, 498, 799 P.2d 836, 839 (1990).
¶ 50 Our supreme court has said nothing since Campbell and Sherrill to suggest that it deems this purpose now inoperative. Nor can this court reasonably attribute a repudiation of that purpose to the two amendments that the legislature has enacted to the informed consent law to date.
¶ 51 As originally enacted, the implied consent statute provided without exception that if a suspect refused to undergo a test, none would be given. 1969 Ariz. Sess. Laws, Ch. 41, § 1. In 1984, the legislature amended the statute to add the medical purpose exception. 1984 Ariz. Sess. Laws, Ch. 257, § 1. Maintaining its restrictive approach to nonconsen-sual blood extraction, however, the legislature did not expand police powers to the full extent that the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted to permit. That is, in Schmerber v. California, the Supreme Court had approved a non-consensual blood draw performed by a physician upon police request. 384 U.S. at 758, 86 S.Ct. 1826. In enacting the medical purposes amendment, however, the Arizona legislature did not authorize the police to initiate a nonconsensual taking of a suspect’s blood, but only to demand part of a sample that medical personnel had chosen to take for independent medical needs. See State v. Cocio, 147 Ariz. 277, 286, 709 P.2d 1336, 1345 (1985). Upholding the statute, our supreme court emphasized its modest impact:
The blood extraction was not performed at the request of the police, but pursuant to the orders of the attending physician for medical purposes. Thus, the intrusion by the police in this case .was not the needle puncture and the insertion of the needle into the vein, but merely a sampling off of an additional portion of the defendant’s blood.
Id. at 286-87, 709 P.2d at 1345-46.
¶ 52 The supreme court reiterated the narrowness of the medical purposes exception in Collins v. Superior Court, holding that the implied consent statute did not even authorize police to obtain a warrant for the seizure of blood from drunk driving suspects. 158 Ariz. 145, 146, 761 P.2d 1049, 1050 (1988). In response, the legislature again amended the statute, expressly authorizing the police to seek a warrant for the taking of blood. 1990 Ariz. Sess. Laws, Ch. 375, § 7.
¶ 53 This statutory history of narrow, incremental change does not support the conclusion that the legislature has decided sub silentio to repudiate three decades of judicial interpretation and to endorse the use of physical coercion to accomplish the extraction of blood. That is too significant a decision, and too substantial a change in course, to be left to implication. It is more reasonable, and more consistent with the interpretive history of the statute, to read the warrant exception as intended instead to offer police an additional, non-violent instrument of compulsion. See, e.g., United States v. Cameron, 538 F.2d 254, 259 (9th Cir.1976) (one purpose a warrant may serve is to help secure the cooperation of a reluctant suspect).
¶ 54 The majority points out that a defendant who forcibly resists the execution of a warrant for blood withdrawal is subject to criminal prosecution under A.R.S. § 13-2402. See supra ¶ 17.10 The majority also invokes *620ttíe legislative effort over recent years to ease the state’s burden of proving intoxication. See, e.g., A.R.S. § 28-1388(D) (permitting evidence of refusal to submit to blood alcohol testing to be admitted in any civil or criminal proceeding). Such provisions and penalties, however, underscore my point. By various measures of non-violent compulsion, the legislature has undertaken to discourage and penalize the refusal to cooperate with blood testing. What the legislature has not yet done, however, is specify whether, and under what conditions, the police should be permitted to undertake blood withdrawal by force.
¶55 There are sound policy reasons to leave it to the legislature to amend the statute once again if it wishes to authorize the forcible execution of blood warrants. In deciding whether, and under what circumstances, to permit such a practice, a legislature must balance individual privacy interests against the needs of law enforcement, consider the adequacy of present means and devices to induce consent, consider the various risks that force entails, and determine what, if any, circumstances warrant such risks. Some legislatures, after conducting such an inquiry, have declined to permit any forcible extraction of blood. See, e.g., Ky.Rev.Stat. Ann. § 189A.105(1) (Michie 1997); Mo. Ann. Stat. § 577.041(1) (West 2000); Mont.Code Ann. § 61-8-402(4) (1999); see also Forcible Removal, 60 S. Cal. L.Rev. at 1119 (describing “overwhelming consensus disfavoring the removal of blood evidence from within the body of [a] drunk driving suspect[ ] by force”). Others have permitted reasonable force, but only with probable cause to believe that the intoxicated driver has caused death or serious bodily injury. See, e.g., Fla Stat. ch. 316.1933 (1999); Haw.Rev. Stat. §§ 286-151.5 & 286-163(a) (1998); N.Y. Vehicle & Traffic Law § 1194(3)(b)(l) (McKinney 1996). Given the historically restrictive thrust of our implied consent statute, we should await deliberate and specific guidance from the legislature before concluding that it has approved the forcible extraction of blood.
¶ 56 Such guidance -would not only benefit the courts by narrowing the focus of eventual constitutional inquiry; it would also greatly aid the police in formulating policy on the subject. There was testimony in this case that the Mesa Police Department lacked any policy to guide its officers concerning force to overcome resistance to a blood-withdrawal warrant. A statute that emerged from a legislative balancing of risks and benefits and interests would give police far better guidance than the ad hoc, case-by-case analysis that courts employ under the federal constitutional standard. See, e.g., Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. at 760, 105 S.Ct. 1611 (“The reasonableness of surgical intrusions beneath the skin depends on a case-by-case approach, in which the individual’s interests in privacy and security are weighed against society’s interests in conducting the procedure.”).
¶ 57 Because I find no statutory basis for the forcible blood withdrawal in this case, I would not reach the constitutional issue upon which the majority bases its decision. I wish to comment, though, on the sweeping nature of the majority’s constitutional analysis.
¶ 58 The Supreme Court has not to date considered or upheld a forcible withdrawal of blood from a drunk driving suspect,11 But the Court has called for case-by-case analysis of the reasonableness of involuntary eviden-tiary incursions beneath the skin. Id. Yet my colleagues, eschewing such analysis, give no weight to the particular circumstances of this case; rather, they approve the forcible execution of any blood withdrawal warrant, no matter what the circumstances of the ease.
¶ 59 As I have noted, some state legislatures and police agencies have limited forcible blood withdrawals to cases involving death or serious injury. This criterion may *621be pertinent to judicial analysis as well. What the Constitution may accommodate as reasonable in one circumstance may not be reasonable in another. See Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. at 763, 105 S.Ct. 1611 (state’s need for evidence should be balanced against the extent of the intrusion); see also id. at 760, 105 S.Ct. 1611 (determination of reasonableness is “a delicate one admitting of few categorical answers”). Here, there was no death, no injury, and no collision. Defendant, pulled over for speeding, was patently intoxicated. His speech was slurred, his eyes were blurred, he flunked the field sobriety tests, he smelled of alcohol, and he could not stand without support. This abundant existent evidence of intoxication should be relevant to a case-specific examination of the reasonableness of forcible blood extraction. The majority, however, sweeps case-specific inquiry aside in favor of a blanket and permissive constitutional rule.
¶ 60 In summary, I believe that my colleagues have taken a mistakenly broad and categorical approach to a constitutional issue that we ought not reach at all. Because our legislature has not authorized police to employ force in execution of a warrant for the taking of blood, there is no need to determine the circumstances, if any, under which such force might constitutionally be employed. Finding that the police exceeded their statutory authority with their blood seizure in this case, I respectfully dissent.

. Although defendant recalled being held down in a chair, Officer Raz testified that the police *617decided to "take him down to the floor where it was the safest place to obtain the blood.”

. As of the time of trial, the subsection currently designated 28-1388(E) was designated 28-1381(0), and subsection 28-1321(D)(l) made reference thereto. The statutes were renumbered by 1998 amendment, and I have used the current numbering in the text.

. A.R.S. § 13-3916(B) provides:
An officer may break into a building, premises, or vehicle or any part thereof, to execute the warrant when:
1. After notice of his authority and purpose, he receives no response within a reasonable time.
2. After notice of his authority and purpose, he is refused admittance.

. See, e.g., A.R.S. § 13-3881 ("Arrest; how made; force and restraint”); § 13-3887 ("Method of arrest by officer by virtue of warrant”); § 13-3888 ("Method of arrest by officer without warrant”); § 13-3891 ("Right of officer to break into building”).

. The majority might have added that one who refuses to comply with a warrant is subject to *620contempt prosecution as well.

. In Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432, 77 S.Ct. 408, 1 L.Ed.2d 448 (1957), the Court upheld the warrantless seizure of a blood sample from an unconscious driver following a collision. In Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966), the Court upheld the warrantless seizure of a blood sample from a conscious driver who refused consent but did not physically resist.