Court Opinion

ID: 9672011
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:47:15.359787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:13.373097
License: Public Domain

*478Mackenzie, J.
(concurring in part and dissenting in part). I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion upholding the use of “Do-Rite sticks.” In my opinion, the evidence obtained against defendant through the use of the Do-Rite sticks should have been suppressed because the use of these pain compliance devices to obtain evidence for a prosecution violated the Due Process Clause of the United Sates Constitution. In all other respects, I concur.
Arresting officer Bradley LaCross described the nature of Do-Rite sticks, and the use of the devices on defendant to obtain his compliance with the taking of a blood sample, as follows:
Q. What steps occurred then to get ahold of the situation?
A. He was asked to lay [sic] down on the bed, which he refused to do. Finally, he was informed to lay [sic] down or we would lay him down on the bed, at which time Officer Troyer and myself laid Eric Hanna down on the bed and the do right [sic] sticks were applied to his wrists.
Q. And the do right [sic] sticks are restraints? I would just maybe have you explain to the jury what that is.
A. They are two pieces of plastic approximately this long attached by approximately a one-inch rope. They are used to restrain people, are considered a technique for compliance.
Q. What effect do they have upon the person they are applied to?
A. They are designed to gain compliance. Once compliance is gained the pressure is supposed to be relieved in order to not cause any injury or long-term pain.
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Q. And just explain to the jury as far as your action and your use of them as to Mr. Hanna. How did you do that?
A. How did we apply them?
*479Q. You say there was control on the amount of pressure?
A. I applied it at the wrist with soft hands. I applied pressure when the lab technician was coming up to draw the blood because Mr. Hanna started to pull away. Pressure was applied. He was told repeatedly. At which time he complied after the pain was applied to him.
Q. Pain, it sounds pretty bad. Was it pinching? How does it all work?
A. It’s just through pressure points that are learned through our training. It’s not a permanent pain. It’s just real quick and simple. It is used for compliance for subjects that aren’t cooperative.
Q. You indicated, I thought, soft hands, if I am quoting you correctly. What does that denote and relate it to other types of procedures that you might have used.
A. It wasn’t used as a restraining instrument or any type of a weapon for use of force that way.
Q. Okay. Are they able to be used in that manner?
A. Yes, they are.
Q. If you had not had the do right [sic] devices at this time, Officer, would you have been able to get the blood?
A. No.
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Q. In the case here with Mr. Hanna how long did you have them applied to him?
A. A few seconds.
Q. And was the same degree of pressure constant as far as the pair of restraints you were controlling?
A. There was a short, very short period of pressure, maybe two seconds, at which time he laid [sic] still. At that time the pressure was released and Mr. Hanna was informed if he didn’t comply further pressure was going to be reapplied.
Q. Now, what was his response to that statement?
A. At that time he laid [sic] still. [Emphasis added.]
*480Defendant asserts that, as a matter of law, giving the police the ability to forcibly draw blood from an individual for a violation of the Vehicle Code amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, presumably under the Eighth Amendment. Because defendant was merely a detainee, however, the Eighth Amendment does not apply. See Brewer v Perrin, 132 Mich App 520, 529, n 3; 349 NW2d 198 (1984). Nevertheless, the Due Process Clause protects a pretrial detainee from the use of excessive force that amounts to punishment. Graham v Connor, 490 US 386, 395, n 10; 109 S Ct 1865; 104 L Ed 2d 443 (1989); Bell v Wolfish, 441 US 520; 99 S Ct 1861; 60 L Ed 2d 447 (1979).
The state may force a person suspected of driving while intoxicated to submit to a blood alcohol test. South Dakota v Neville, 459 US 553, 559; 103 S Ct 916; 74 L Ed 2d 748 (1983); Schmerber v California, 384 US 757, 771; 86 S Ct 1826; 16 L Ed 2d 908 (1966). Thus, in this case, requiring defendant to allow a sample of his blood to be taken did not in itself violate his substantive due process rights. However, as noted in Schmerber, supra, “[i]t would be a different case if the police . . . responded to resistance with inappropriate force.” id. at 760, n 4. See also Neville, supra at 559, n 9; People v Holloway, 416 Mich 288, 299; 330 NW2d 405 (1982). In my opinion, the police in this case did just that.
In Rochin v California, 342 US 165, 166; 72 S Ct 205; 96 L Ed 183 (1952), police officers entered the defendant’s home and observed him place some capsules in his mouth. The officers attempted to forcibly extract the capsules but were unable to do so. Following this,
*481[Rochin] was handcuffed and taken to a hospital. At the direction of one of the officers a doctor forced an emetic solution through a tube into Rochin’s stomach against his will. This “stomach pumping” produced vomiting. In the vomited matter were found two capsules which proved to contain morphine. [Id. at 166.]
Eventually, the defendant was convicted of illegally possessing morphine. The Supreme Court, in reversing Rochin’s conviction under the Due Process Clause, stated:
This is conduct that shocks the conscience. Illegally breaking into the privacy of the petitioner, the struggle to open his mouth and remove what was there, the forcible extraction of his stomach contents — this course of proceeding by agents of government to obtain evidence is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities. They are methods too close to the rack and the screw to permit of constitutional differentiation. [Id. at 172.]
Since Rochin was decided, the Supreme Court has clarified that claims of excessive force under the Due Process Clause should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment “reasonableness” standard. Graham, supra at 395. The question is not simply whether the force was necessary to accomplish a legitimate police objective; it is whether the force used was reasonable in light of all the relevant circumstances. Hammer v Gross, 932 F2d 842, 846 (CA 9, 1991).
The use of the Do-Rite sticks in this case was not reasonable under all the circumstances. Two officers were with defendant when his blood was drawn by a medical technician. Defendant repeatedly insisted that he did not want to be stuck with a needle because he was afraid of contracting AIDS. The officers each used the Do-Rite sticks when defendant, *482who was lying on a hospital bed, pulled his arms inward against his chest. Unquestionably, it was necessary to restrain defendant’s movement for his own safety. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the use of the Do-Rite sticks was excessive. The record indicates that defendant was 5’ 9” tall and weighed 170 pounds. Officer LaCross, on the other hand, was 6’ 1” and weighed 250 pounds; he was a weight lifter who could bench press 300 pounds. Officer Troyer was 5’ 11” and weighed 215 pounds. It was undisputed that it took a matter of seconds to draw the blood. The two officers should have been able to restrain the supine defendant for such a brief time without resort to pain compliance devices. There was also evidence that hospital restraints were available to the officers. Under these circumstances, I find it both shocking and unreasonable that defendant was forced into compliance through the use of pain-inflicting devices.
The propriety of using devices called “Orcutt Police Nonchakus,” pain compliance tools which, like Do-Rite sticks, consist of two sticks each connected at one end by a cord, was addressed in Forrester v San Diego, 25 F3d 804 (CA 9, 1994). Over a dissent, the two-judge majority upheld a jury finding that the police did not use excessive force in using the nonchakus against demonstrators. The dissenter distinguished between the use of force (possibly causing incidental pain) and the direct infliction of pain to coerce a person to act a certain way, and noted that the latter is, at least generally, constitutionally proscribed. The dissenter stated:
To be reasonable, force has to be designed to accomplish a legitimate objective efficiently. The objective was to make the demonstrators move from where they were seated to *483the vans. But the force was not used to move the demonstrators into the vans. It was used to punish them for refusing to get up and walk to the vans. It worked as punishment does, by hurting people enough so that they do something to avoid it. The nonchakus did not work like pinching the fatty part of the arm, or pulling a person by the finger, or a hammerlock, to move the demonstrators to the van. The nonchakus . . . were used as a pain inflicting device.
In this case, a more efficient pain compliance technique would have been for the officers to warn demonstrators that if they did not move voluntarily they would be burned with lighted cigarettes, and then hold the cigarettes against then skin until they complied. The pain would have been comparable, the risk of long term disability less than from tendon injury or fractures in the wrist, and the officers would have been able to keep one hand free. Probably one officer instead of two could have accomplished each arrest. I am quite sure we would not accept the use of lighted cigarettes against the skin as reasonable force in this case. Yet the nonchakus were worse. They inflicted more serious injuries, with longer lasting consequences, without working any better to arrest people rapidly with minimum police effort. The difference may be that nonchakus at least look like dragging devices. But they were not being used to drag, so that distinction does not work.
* * *
. . . The Graham standard of reasonable force bars this use of pain as a law enforcement tool. The intentional infliction of pain was not a reasonable means of achieving a legitimate end. [Id. at 813-814, 815 (emphasis added).]
I agree with this reasoning. Like Forrester, the devices in this case were not used to directly control the physical actions of a person, but rather, were used to inflict pain to coerce a person into compliance. As such, the use of the Do-Rite sticks must be condemned as unreasonable.
*484Finally, it should be noted that “where power to punish is granted to persons in lower levels of administrative authority, there is an inherent and natural difficulty in enforcing the limitations of that power.” Jackson v Bishop, 404 F2d 571, 579 (CA 8, 1968). In this case, Officer LaCross testified that he thought “just about everybody in the [Sault Ste. Marie police] department is qualified and certified” in the use of Do-Rite sticks. The potential for abuse of this device by unscrupulous police officers is obvious, and it would be difficult to establish a departmental policy distinguishing between “permissible” and impermissible levels of pain infliction.
As the Supreme Court remarked in Rochin, supra at 173, “to sanction the brutal conduct . . . would be to afford brutality the cloak of law.” Because the evidence used against defendant to secure his conviction was obtained by unnecessary methods that offend the Due Process Clause, I would reverse.