Court Opinion

ID: 9759077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:03:06.773213+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:59.005840
License: Public Domain

*625NIGRO, Justice,
Concurring.
Today the majority concludes, consistent with Justice Zappala’s concurring opinion in Commonwealth v. Riedel, 539 Pa. 172, 651 A.2d 135 (1994), that under Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, the police cannot obtain the results of a blood test pursuant to 75 Pa.C.S. § 3755(a) without a search warrant if: (1) the police did not request that a blood sample be taken for purposes of determining the BAC of the defendant; and (2) the emergency health care provider(s) who performed the blood test did so for purely medical reasons, rather than out of a perceived duty to do so under Section 3755(a). I believe that the limited result reached by the majority and, perhaps more importantly, the analysis employed in order to reach that result, does damage to the settled methodology this Court has used to analyze state constitutional provisions in comparison to their federal counterparts to determine whether the former provide additional protections which the latter do not. See, e.g., Commonwealth v. Edmunds, 526 Pa. 374, 586 A.2d 887 (1991)(setting forth four-pronged methodology for state constitutional analysis). In my view, Riedel should be expressly overruled, and this Court should find that the warrantless police seizure of Appellant’s blood test results was invalid under both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. Accordingly, I concur in the result reached by the majority.
The Riedel Court concluded that the warrantless police seizure of Riedel’s blood test results did not violate the Fourth Amendment’s proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures because the seizure was executed in accordance with 75 Pa.C.S. § 3755(a). While I recognize that Riedel is a decision of somewhat recent vintage, I believe that it was wrongly decided because the blood test at issue in that case was performed for purely medical reasons, and not in response to any request on the part of a police officer or in accordance with a perceived statutory duty to do so pursuant to Section 3755(a). Based on its own terms, Section 3755(a) applies only in limited situations where emergency health care providers *626draw a blood sample based on a police request or a perceived statutory obligation to do so in order to assist the police in procuring evidence for a possible future DUI prosecution. Thus, it seems clear that the Riedel Court erred in relying on Section 3755(a) in upholding the police seizure of Riedel’s blood test results. Assuming that the Riedel Court had instead found Section 3755(a) inapplicable to the warrantless police seizure of Riedel’s blood test results, it seems only logical that the Court would also have found that the seizure violated the Fourth Amendment. In fact, the Riedel Court said as much in dictum, stating: “We recognize that in the absence of the implied consent scheme [i.e., Section 3755(a) ], the actions of Trooper Davis would constitute an unreasonable search and seizure.” 539 Pa. at 182, 651 A.2d at 141.
Importantly, the operative facts in the instant appeal are practically identical to those presented in Riedel. Nevertheless, the majority, without expressly overruling Riedel, concludes that Section 3755(a) is inapplicable to the warrantless police seizure of Appellant’s blood test results, and consequently finds the seizure violative of Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. In addition, by quoting a passage from Commonwealth v. Kohl, 532 Pa. 152, 615 A.2d 308 (1992), concerning the distinct identity and vitality of Article I, Section 8 in comparison to its federal counterpart in the Fourth Amendment, the majority incorrectly implies that the applicability of Section 3755(a) to a warrantless police seizure of blood test results depends on whether the defendant decides to challenge the seizure based on federal or state constitutional grounds. It most decidedly does not. Rather, the applicability of Section 3755(a) in any particular case depends solely on the facts surrounding the performance of the blood test and the subsequent police seizure of the blood test results.
As the above discussion indicates, I would expressly overrule Riedel, as I believe that the facts presented in that case do not support the applicability of Section 3755(a). Likewise, based on the practically identical facts presented in the instant appeal, I believe that 75 Pa.C.S. § 3755(a) is not applicable to the warrantless police seizure of Appellant’s blood test results. *627Thus, I would conclude that the unauthorized, warrantless police seizure of Appellants blood test results violated both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.