Court Opinion

ID: 9695493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:20:56.069599+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:12.779439
License: Public Domain

FLANDERS, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with that portion of Justice Goldberg’s opinion that concludes that G.L.1956 § 31-27-2.1 bars police officers from obtaining a search warrant that would force a person suspected of driving under the influence, death resulting, to submit to a blood test for the presence of alcohol after that person has refused to consent to such testing upon the request of a law enforcement officer to do so. Section 31-27-2.1(a) provides, in pertinent part, that in these circumstances no blood test shall be given to a suspect unless he or she consents thereto (“none shall be given”). I do not believe that this restriction on police-initiated blood testing of motorists, in the absence of consent, pertains solely to situations involving mere misdemeanor charges of driving under the influence. Rather, I conclude that the Legislature meant what it said and did not intend to permit the police to circumvent the various procedural and other safeguards for such testing that are set forth in § 31-27-2 by allowing the police to obtain a search warrant authorizing such testing despite the suspect’s refusal to consent to the officer’s request that he or she voluntarily submit to such testing. Moreover, for the reasons indicated in Justice Goldberg’s opinion, I do not believe that this legislative limitation on the ability of the police to obtain search warrants violates any applicable separation-of-powers principles.
I also agree, however, with Justice Bourcier’s analysis of the scope of § 31-27-2(a). But for the Legislature’s enactment of § 31-27-2.1 and this Court’s decision in State v. Timms, 505 A.2d 1132 (R.I.1986) and its progeny, I would be inclined to agree that the consent and testing provisions of § 31-27-2 are, by their terms, applicable only in misdemeanor prosecutions for driving under the influence, and have no application whatsoever to felony prosecutions for driving under the influence, death resulting. But, in my judgment, this issue becomes a moot point because I also agree that § 31-27-2.1(a)’s “none shall be given” language is not so limited, on its face, to license-revocation proceedings or to misdemeanor prosecutions. Rather, according to State v. Berker, 120 R.I. 849, 391 A.2d 107 (1978), it is § 31-27-2.1(a)’s implied-consent provisions that are limited to license-revocation proceedings; but the statute’s mandate of no *1172blood testing without consent (“none shall be given”) applies whenever a motorist has refused to submit to the § 31-27-2 tests— regardless of whether the police ultimately prefer any charges or initiate any proceedings against the motorist who has refused to submit to the requested testing. Thus, § 31-27-2.1(a) indicates that no blood testing shall occur if consent is not obtained from “[a]ny person who operates a motor vehicle within this state [who] *** having been placed under arrest refuses upon the request of a law enforcement officer to submit to the tests, as provided in § 31-27-2.” In that case, “none shall be given” — irrespective of whatever particular misdemeanor or felony charge(s) may or may not eventuate in any given case.28 Because § 31-27-2.1 is more specific than G.L.1956 §§ 12-5-1 and 12-5-2 (the general statutes authorizing the issuance of search warrants), I construe § 31-27-2.1(a)’s “none shall be given” directive as constituting an exception to the more general search-warrant statutes — assuming, without deciding, that a warrant authorizing the seizure of a person’s blood to test for the alcohol content therein would even fall within the scope of that statute, given its apparent property-seizure limitations. Although this issue is not before us and has not been properly presented for our decision, it is one that, as Justice Goldberg’s opinion elucidates, raises very difficult and troubling questions about the propriety of issuing search warrants at all to seize a person’s blood.
Moreover, there is a further reason why the use of a search warrant to compel a suspect to submit to a blood test against his or her will may be problematic under our state Constitution. Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, “[n]o person *** shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself ***.” The comparable provision in our state Constitution, however, contains different and potentially more expansive wording: article 1, section 13, of the Rhode Island Constitution entitled “Self-crimination,” provides that “No person in a court of common law shall be compelled to give self-criminating evidence.” Thus, while the Fifth Amendment is limited to a prohibition against compelling persons in any criminal case to be a witness against themselves, the bar against compulsory self-incrimination in Rhode Island’s Declaration of Rights arguably provides broader protection by precluding the government not just from compelling people to be witnesses against themselves but also from compelling them “to give self-criminating evidence.” R.I. Const, art. 1, sec. 13. Cf. Commonwealth v. Mavredakis, 430 Mass. 848, 725 N.E.2d 169, 178 (2000) (comparing the textual differences between Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, art. 12, which states “No subject shall *** be compelled to accuse, or furnish evidence against himself,” and the Fifth Amendment, and noting that “[t]he text of art. 12, as it relates to self-incrimination, is broader than the Fifth Amendment,” citing Opinion of the Justices, 412 Mass. 1201, 591 N.E.2d 1073 (1992), in which the Supreme Judicial Court advised the Massachusetts Senate that admitting evidence of a defendant’s refusal to consent to a breathalyzer test at a criminal trial would violate art. 12, in contradiction to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 564, 103 S.Ct. 916, 923, 74 L.Ed.2d 748, 759 (1983)).
Although previous Rhode Island judicial decisions have refused to differentiate be*1173tween the standard to be applied under article 1, section 13, and the one that applies under the Fifth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, see, e.g., State v. Bertram, 591 A.2d 14, 21-22 (R.I.1991) (refusing to deviate from the Fifth Amendment test when analyzing the validity of compelled handwriting exemplars under article 1, section 13, of the Rhode Island Constitution), no Rhode Island Supreme Court decision yet has examined the potentially critical difference in the wording of these two constitutional provisions and its arguable significance in cases in which the government requires a suspect “to give self-criminating evidence” that is not in itself of a communicative or a testimonial nature. R.I. Const, art. 1, sec. 13.
In other words, unlike the Federal Constitution, the Rhode Island Constitution does not seem to incorporate, by its terms, an express testimonial or a communicative limitation on the compelled giving of evidence by a person. Thus, the possibility exists that the framers drafted article 1, section 13, in such a manner as to provide for a broader ban on the government’s compelling of self-incriminatory acts than the Fifth Amendment analogue to the United States Constitution (at least as that clause has been construed most recently by a majority of the United States Supreme Court). For example, such acts as forcing suspects and witnesses to give their blood, handwriting exemplars, DNA samples, fingerprints, or documents, or otherwise to assist the prosecution “in a court of common law” by the compulsory giving of evidence of a “self-criminating” nature may fall within the literal terms of article 1, section 13, regardless of whether the compelled giving of such evidence is “testimonial” in nature. See, e.g., Doe v. United States, 487 U.S. 201, 108 S.Ct. 2341, 101 L.Ed.2d 184 (1988).
Moreover, in a recent concurring opinion authored by Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Scalia), in the United States Supreme Court case of United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27, ——, 120 S.Ct. 2037, 2050-54, 147 L.Ed.2d 24, 43-48 (2000), Justice Thomas noted that, historically, “substantial support [exists] for the view that the term ‘witness’ [in the Fifth Amendment] meant a person who gives or furnishes evidence, a broader meaning than that which our case law currently ascribes to .the term.” Id. at -, 120 S.Ct. at 2050, 147 L.Ed.2d at 44. Justice Thomas specifically observed that during the debate over the ratification of the Federal Constitution Rhode Island was one of four states that proposed a bill of rights that would grant citizens a right against any governmental compulsion “to give evidence” — regardless of whether, in doing so, the person would “be a witness” against himself or herself. Id. at -, 120 S.Ct. at 2052, 147 L.Ed.2d at 46 (citing the Rhode Island Proposal of May 29, 1790). Compare Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 634-35, 6 S.Ct. 524, 534-35, 29 L.Ed. 746, 752 (1886) (holding that the Fifth Amendment protected a suspect against the compelled production of books and papers), with Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 408, 96 S.Ct. 1569, 1579, 48 L.Ed.2d 39, 54 (1976) (permitting the government to force a person to furnish incriminating documentary evidence and protecting only the “testimonial” aspects of that transfer); but see Hubbell, 530 U.S. at -, 120 S.Ct. at 2048, 147 L.Ed.2d at 41-42 (barring government from indicting an immunized witness based upon the documents produced by the witness in response to a subpoena duces tecum).
In any event, in a case properly preserving this issue, I would remain open to the argument that the Rhode Island Constitution (article 1, section 13) should be construed more broadly than the Federal Constitution in this respect because of the Rhode Island framers’ failure to adopt the Federal Constitution’s “witness against himself’ language. U.S. Const.Amend. Y. Arguably, the broader terminology of the Rhode Island Constitution — precluding a person from being compelled “to give self-criminating evidence” — means that no *1174“testimonial” or “communicative” limitation exists whenever the government attempts to compel a person to provide it with “self-criminating evidence,” for use “in a court of common law.” R.I. Const, art. 1, sec. 13. Under this interpretation, the government could be barred from compelling suspects to give handwriting exemplars, blood, fingerprints, DNA samples, or other such “self-criminating” evidence if they objected to doing so. But because this issue is not now before us, I would leave this question for this Court to address in another case that raises it. Suffice it to say for now that, in cases like this one, construing § 81-27-2.1 to preclude nonconsensual seizures of a person’s blood for drug-testing purposes avoids the necessity for us to decide the difficult constitutional issues described above — as well as the other legal and pragmatic problems alluded to in Justice Goldberg’s opinion — if the police were entitled to compel a person to give them a blood sample after the person has refused a police officer’s request to submit to such testing voluntarily and after the police have sought and obtained a search warrant for that purpose.
For these reasons, I would answer question one in the negative, question two in the affirmative, and question three in the negative.

. But note that G.L.1956 § 31-27-2.1(a)'s "none shall be given” mandate is only triggered if three factual preconditions are satisfied: (1) the motorist is placed under arrest; (2) the law enforcement officer requests the motorist to submit to any of the § 31-27-2 tests; and (3) the motorist refuses to do so. In this case, all of these factual circumstances are present. Thus, we have no occasion to opine on whether, for example, a nonconsen-sual seizure of blood incident to a lawful arrest would be valid under Rhode Island law if the law enforcement officer did not first request the motorist to consent to the § 31-27-2 tests but simply arranged for a sample of the motorist's blood to be drawn for testing purposes with or without the motorist’s cooperation.