Court Opinion

ID: 9750143
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:23:11.956926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:03.341290
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Pomeroy:
There is no doubt that a warrantless search in the form of a blood test for alcoholic content, if it is to be valid, must be “substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and . . . confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest.” Stoner v. California, 376 U.S. 483, 486, 11 L. Ed. 2d 856, 859 (1964). The problem is how to apply this test in a given set of circumstances, bearing in mind that it is constitutionally mandated by the Fourth Amendment: if not closely connected in time and place with an arrest, a warrantless search is “unreasonable”.
The Court holds that the lapse of 13 days between search and arrest operates, per se, to vitiate the search as not substantially contemporaneous with, and so not an incident to, the arrest. While following the letter of the test as enunciated in Stoner, supra, this holding, in my view, distorts its substance. The Court’s opinion recognizes that existing circumstances may render valid a search which is not strictly contemporaneous with the arrest, Commonwealth v. Gordon, 431 Pa. 512, 246 A. 2d 325 (1968), but ignores the extenuating circumstances which are present here. The blood test was ordered because the investigating officer who extricated appellant from the wreckage found that the appellant “reeked of alcohol”, and that there were beer bottles in his car. As in Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770, 16 L. Ed. 2d 908, 919 (1966), this presented an emergency situation “in which the delay necessary to obtain a [search] warrant, under the circumstances, threatened The destruction of the evidence’.” While in Sehmerber the arrest of the suspect took place at the scene of the accident, the arrest here was deferred because the appellant, like the victim, was seriously injured and in need *27of immediate medical attention. After receiving the results of tbe blood test the day following the collision, the police officer filed a complaint charging appellant with involuntary manslaughter. Warrants were obtained but, as stated above, were not then served. Until the appellant had recovered sufficiently to be discharged from the hospital, it was deemed unwise to confront him with an arrest warrant. He was placed under arrest as he was being released from the hospital.*
I am unable to see how this solicitude for appellant’s health on the part of the police department can be said to have rendered the blood test an unreasonable search. It seems much more unreasonable to require that a person as severely injured as was appellant be placed under arrest immediately, and, in consequence, under armed guard during the period of his hospital confinement.
The right granted by the Fourth Amendment to be secure in one’s person from unreasonable search and seizure is certainly one of our most prized possessions. What is an unreasonable search must necessarily be judged by standards of reasonableness. While Schmerber was not concerned with the problem of contemporaneousness as between arrest and search, it seems to me to support this approach to a warrantless blood test situation. I am not persuaded that the action of *28the police in delaying the appellant’s arrest under the circumstances of this case was unreasonable. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
Mr. Chief Justice Bell and Mr. Justice Jones join in this dissent.

At the suppression hearing the police officer testified on cross-examination as to the reason for the delayed arrest: “Q. Why did you wait until Mr. Murray was discharged from the hospital to serve the warrant on him? A. Well, it is more or less standard procedure we got, if he is in the hospital under treatment, we can hardly serve the warrant on him and take him down to the prison or to make bail. We have to almost wait until he is discharged before a warrant could be served for his own health. Q. Is it because you didn’t feel you would be able to take him to a magistrate or justice of the peace? A. That’s true, and he was undergoing care at the hospital and the warrant wasn’t served there due to his being under medical attention.”