Court Opinion

ID: 9694649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:49:55.979361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:04.326362
License: Public Domain

WILLIS, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s holding, which would require an on-the-scene assessment of the degree of exigency of the need for alcohol-concentration testing even when police believe a serious criminal offense has occurred.
As the majority points out, both probable cause and exigent circumstances are needed to justify the warrantless removal of blood. State v. Aguirre, 295 N.W.2d 79, 81 (Minn.1980). The majority asserts that there is no authority holding that the presence of alcohol, and the need, therefore, to test for it, is by itself an exigent circumstance. But our supreme court has unmistakably implied that it is, even when the less-serious offense of DWI is the only crime suspected. See Tyler v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety, 368 N.W.2d 275, 278 (Minn.1985) (stating that warrantless removal of blood is constitutional if there is probable cause to believe that the offense of DWI has been committed “and that the removal of the blood is necessary to preserve evidence of guilt”). The majority cites no Minnesota decision requiring a case-by-case assessment of the exigency of the need for alcohol testing that its decision imposes, even in DWI cases, which are less serious than the crime suspected in this case.
*441The majority’s holding rests on a highly selective reading of the caselaw in Minnesota. The majority notes that Aguirre fails to consider Schmerber. But that is because in Aguirre the supreme court treats as settled law its decision in State v. Oevering, 268 N.W.2d 68, 72 (Minn.1978), in which it broadly construed Schmerber as recognizing exigent circumstances when “destruction of the evidence (i.e., the blood-alcohol content) is threatened.” This broad reading of Schmerber is essential to the development of implied-consent law in Minnesota. Without it, the supreme court could not have stated, as it did in Nyflot v. Comm’r of Pub. Safety, after citing Schmerber, that the legislature “could repeal the implied consent law and direct police officers to administer chemical tests against the suspect’s will.” 369 N.W.2d 512, 517 (Minn.1985). That view of Schmerber leaves no room for the majority’s reading of the case as limited to its facts, a reading that the majority treats not just as an arguable interpretation of Schmerber but as its unchallenged holding.
In cases involving the more serious offense of criminal vehicular operation (or homicide), our supreme court has long held that police need not resort to the implied-consent statute, or otherwise obtain the driver’s consent, in order to constitutionally obtain a blood sample without a warrant. See State v. Speak, 339 N.W.2d 741, 744-45 (Minn.1983); Aguirre, 295 N.W.2d at 82. In none of these cases has the supreme court held that the exigency of obtaining a blood sample depends on the degree of the driver’s apparent intoxication, the distance from a hospital, or the logistics of obtaining a telephonic search warrant, some of the factors cited by the majority. Requiring police officers to balance such factors on the scene poses an impossible burden.
Assessing the relevant “exigency” factors is not an easy task even for a court. For example, the driver’s apparent degree of intoxication is not as relevant as the majority suggests. The supreme court has emphasized that an officer need not have probable cause to believe that a driver is intoxicated in order to have blood drawn, only “probable cause to believe that administration of a blood alcohol test will result in the discovery of evidence relevant in the prosecution of a crime.” State v. Lee, 585 N.W.2d 378, 382 (Minn.1998). And a driver cannot be too drunk for her alcohol concentration to be relevant evidence. The officer at the scene cannot gauge a driver’s alcohol concentration or know whether a prosecutor would prefer to charge her with negligent driving while impaired or negligent driving with an alcohol concentration over .08. The exigency exists because “the removal of the blood is necessary to preserve evidence,” Tyler, 368 N.W.2d at 278, not because the driver’s intoxication is a close question.
In summary, there is a bright-line rule that the majority opinion obscures. The obscuring of that line will cause confusion for the police. See State v. Schinzing, 342 N.W.2d 105, 109 (Minn.1983) (noting that requiring case-by-case assessment of whether police can ask for a driver’s license “would create unnecessary confusion among the police”). Police officers should not have to balance likely intoxication levels against the logistics of telephonic warrants at the scene of a serious accident.