United States Supreme Court rejects routine no-warrant DUI blood tests

The Supreme Court ruled that police usually must try to obtain a search warrant from a judge before ordering blood tests for drunken-driving suspects.

The justices sided with a Missouri man who was subjected to a blood test without a warrant and found to have nearly twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.

Justice Sotomayor wrote for the court that the natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood is generally not sufficient reason to jettison the requirement that police get a judge’s approval before drawing a blood sample.

Missouri and the Obama administration were asking the court to endorse a blanket rule that would have allowed the tests without a warrant.

Eight of the nine justices rejected that plea. The only dissent was from Justice Thomas who held that a warrantless blood test does not violate a suspect’s constitutional rights.

The case is stemmed from the arrest of Tyler McNeely in a rural area of Missouri’s Cape Girardeau County. A state trooper stopped McNeely for speeding and swerving of his car. The driver, who had two previous dui convictions, refused to submit to a breath test to measure the alcohol level in his body.

He failed several field sobriety tests. The arresting officer stated that McNeely speech was slurred and he was unsteady on his feet. There seemed little dispute that the officer had enough evidence to get a warrant for a blood test, but chose not to. Instead, he drove McNeely to a hospital, where a technician drew blood.

McNeely’s blood alcohol content was 0.154 percent, well above the 0.08 legal limit.

The Missouri Supreme Court upheld a lower court order that threw out the results of the blood test. The state high court said the blood test violated the Constitution’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. Police need a warrant to take a suspect’s blood except when a delay could threaten a life or destroy potential evidence, the Missouri court stated.

The case is Missouri v. McNeely 11-1425

NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT TO PLACE MOBILE SCANNERS ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY

2-1-2012

4^TH Amendment to the United States Constitution states: :The right of the people to be secure in their person, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particular describing the place to be searched, and the  person or things to be seized.

Commissioner Ray Kelly of the NYPD is in talks with the Pentagon to secure body scanners that will be used throughout the Big Apple.

According to Commission Kelly this new technology would be only used in “Reasonably suspicious circumstances”.  But what constitutes “suspicious” in the eyes of the NYPD?.

The technology that Commissioner Kelly is looking to acquire is called Terahertz Imagining Detection scanners, this high tech radiation detector will measure energy that is emitted from a person’s body. 

These scanners will allow the NYPD to conduct illegal searches by means of scanning anyone that is walking down the streets of New York .  Any object that is on your person could be privy to the eyes of the detector, and any suspicious screens can prompt the police to search someone on suspicion of having a gun, or anything else under their clothes.

So basically anyone that is walking down the street can be a subject of a search without knowing it.

Last May, the NYPD revealed that of the over 180,000 stop and frisk encounters reported %88 of them ended in neither an arrest nor a summons leading many to assume that New York Cops are already going above and beyond the law by searching seemingly anyone that they chose.

The question is then does this searches fall under the 4^th Amendment rights in regards to search and seizure.

Do law enforcement officers need to have a search warrant to search your cell phone during an arrest

As I was doing a research paper on searches and seizures I came across a recent California Supreme Court case involving whether or not police can search cell phones during any arrests.

First lets start with a definition of 4^th Amendment to the United States Constitution:

It states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, house, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describes the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Recently the California Supreme Court made a ruling in which they stated that a search of a defendant’s cell phone during an arrest without a search warrant was legal and constitutional.  The ruling apparently applies to the entire contents of your cell phone, including emails, passwords, voicemails and etc.

The California Supreme Court specifically ruled:

“We hold that the cell phone was “immediately associated with defendant’s persons” and that the warrantless search of the cell phone therefore was valid”.

In this case the defendant was arrested for selling Ecstasy to an undercover officer, they seized his cell phone. During interrogation, an officer searched the phone and found a text message that stated: “6 4 80” which the officer interpreted as an offer to sell 6 pills of Ecstasy for $80.

The trial text was used against the defendant in his criminal trial.  His defense attorneys attempted to have the text message evidence suppressed on the grounds that the search of the cell phone was an illegal search because there was no search warrant for the phone.

Justice Kathryn Mickle Werderer noted that the decision to permit police “to rummage at leisure through the wealth of personal and business information that can be carried on a mobile phone or handheld computer merely because they device was taken from an arrestee’s person.”

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger wrote for the majority” Objects failing under the banner of ‘closed container’ have traditionally been physical objects capable of holding other physical objects… Even the more basic models of modern cell phones are capable of storing a wealth of digitized information wholly unlike any physical objects found within a closed container.”

The only way that this issue will be solved is for the United States Supreme Court to hear this issue and make a final decision.

I look forward to hearing your comments or questions on this matter.

Frank Osekowsky

August 13^th, 2011