Court Opinion

ID: 9538821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:42:12.266624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:58:10.944876
License: Public Domain

ZIMMERMAN, Chief Justice,
concurring:
I join the opinion of Justice Durham. I write only to emphasize the fact-sensitive nature of this decision. First, there was nothing in the record to suggest that the evidence could not have been obtained in another way, either by permitting it to pass through defendant, by pumping his stomach, or by measuring his blood levels for indications of the presence of the drug and a determination of the quantities. Although each of these methods may have been rather unpleasant to defendant and may have amounted to an invasion of his person, he impliedly consented to them by trying to swallow the evidence and forcing the police to resort to these methods. Whatever their drawbacks, at least they are not within the exclusive control of the arresting officer and can be performed under circumstances where others can monitor them and where the risk of harm to the suspect is not uniquely high.
Second, nothing in the record indicates that the methods the court of appeals would have allowed for the field extraction of evidence from a suspect’s mouth are empirically tested, are reasonably safe, and can be predictably used in the field without posing an unreasonable risk of harm to the suspect.
In my view, a future case might present facts that would alter either or both of these factors sufficiently to warrant a reconsideration of the propriety of so-called “choke” extraction methods.