Articles Posted in Fourth Amendment

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Just last term the United StatesSupreme Court held in McNeely v. Missouri, that a warrant is presumptively required before obtaining a blood sample from a drunk driving supsect. However this week, in Navarette v. California, the United States Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, held that a police officer does not have to confirm an anonymous tip of reckless driving before stopping a vehicle.

A woman who actually identified herself on a 911 call, but was not identified in court, said she had been run off the road by a truck, and provided a description and tag number. An officer located the truck and followed it without observing any other traffic violations. A five member majority found that even though no other violations were observed by the police officer, the officer had articulable reasonable suspicion of drunk driving under the totality of the circumstances. The Court suggested that if the information provided by the caller had been less specific or the offense alleged less serious, that the information would have been insufficient to justify the stop.
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In Missouri v. McNeely, the Supreme Court held: “In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so.” At first blush, it appeared the main impact of the decision would be in the few jurisdictions where warrantless blood tests were the norm before April 17, 2013, the date McNeely was decided. But upon further reflection, it appears that McNeely requires the suppression of all warrantless breath tests.

Warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable. Where there is a warrantless search, the government has the burden of proving the legality of the search, that it was conducted pursuant to a recognized exception to the warrant requirement, such as exigent circumstances, consent, and search incident to an arrest. However, none of those exceptions to the warrant requirement help the State when it comes to breath tests.

The case of Skinner v. Railway Executives Ass’n made it clear that a breath test is a search. McNeely held that exigent circumstances did not exist in every DUI case to allow police to dispense with obtaining a warrant to obtain blood. If it takes a comparable amount of time to obtain a breath test as it does to obtain a blood test, then exigent circumstances cannot be claimed to justify not getting a warrant for a breath test.

Another argument the State could make is that under Maryland’s implied consent law the defendant consented to take a test. However, the decision to submit is only after the defendant is warned that a lengthy license suspension may be imposed if he or she refuses and is also told that a refusal may carry more jail time. These implied consent statutes contain a coercive character that would likely invalidate the voluntary consent required by the Fourth Amendment. A number of states have agreed with that analysis.

The final argument the State could make is that the search was conducted incident to an arrest. However, the Supreme Court limited the applicability of search incident to arrest in Arizona v. Gant. A search incident to arrest is for officer safety and may not be conducted after arrest. The breath test in DUI cases is conducted at the police station long after the arrest. So this exception is unlikely to help the State either.
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Monday, March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day and the police will be ready so beware. A Prince George’s County Police press release stated:

PGPD to Conduct St. Patrick’s Day Sobriety Checkpoint.

Last year, nearly 550 drivers were arrested for DUI across Maryland on the St. Patrick’s Day weekend. We’re committed every day to protecting our citizens against those who choose to drink and drive but especially on what has proven to be a dangerous holiday on the roads.

The Special Operations Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint next Monday, March 17, 2014, from 6:00 pm to 12:00 am. The Maryland State Police will join our officers in stopping drivers in the 7900 block of Annapolis Road in Lanham.

The PGPD wants to ensure revelers rely on more than luck to make it home safely on St. Patrick’s Day. If you’re planning an evening of celebration, please plan ahead. Choose a designated driver, commit to calling a cab or try SoberRide. The program will run on St. Patrick’s Day from 4:00 pm – 4:00 am. It offers free cab rides. The number is 1-800-200-TAXI.

For more information, contact the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Media Relations Division at (301) 772-4710.

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In Maryland courts, hundreds of DUI (driving under the influence) and DWI (driving while impaired) cases are heard every day. The vast majority of cases are resolved by the defendant pleading guilty on the terms offered by the prosecutor whether the defendant has a lawyer or not. However, in state court, judges are prohibited from punishing a defendant who elects to plead not guilty. It is unusual in Maryland for a prosecutor to offer a defendant a result that is better than what would happen anyway if the case went to trial and the defendant lost. So why not roll the dice? The defendant has nothing to lose.

An example of this occurred yesterday in a District Court trial of mine. My client had a number of prior offenses, and although the most recent was over 20 years ago, he did have some exposure to jail. With some judges he was facing a lot of jail time. His breath test was very high. The prosecutor offered him a plea to driving under the influence of alcohol and she would recommend that he be sent to jail. This was the same thing he would get after a trial if we lost, which I fully expected! However, trials sometimes yield surprises.

The officer testified that he received a call for an accident and proceeded to the location. When he arrived he spotted a Dodge truck that looked like the description he received and pulled his car in front of it so it could not leave the parking lot it was in. The officer could not remember whether the truck was in motion or stopped. I objected because the State had never informed us what the original description was. Under Maryland discovery rules, the State is required to provide all information relevant to any searches and seizures. I was moving to suppress all the evidence seized as the result of an illegal stop. The judge took a break to consider the objection.

When the judge came back, he granted my motion, but not for the reason I argued. He said that he was granting the motion beoause the officer did not indicate who was at fault in the accident and that he had not testified that he had been told that the defendant was uncooperative and had failed to exchange information. So he had no evidence that the officer was in possession of any information indicating the defendant had committed any crime during the accident or after it, and granted the motion to suppress, followed by a motion for a judgment of acquittal. Not guilty.
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The U.S. Supreme Court held oral argument yesterday in the case of Navarette v. California. This case presents the important issue of when police can stop a car based on an anonymous tip without corroborating the details provided by the caller. An anonymous caller informed police that Navarette’s vehicle was driving recklessly and almost ran them off the road. The caller provided a description of the vehicle. Police spotted the vehicle 19 miles down the road and followed for another 5 miles without seeing any bad driving. Ultimately, the vehicle was stopped and police found marijuana. Under the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule, if the stop was illegal, the marijuana must be suppressed. That means the trial court couldn’t consider it and Navarette would get off.

During the argument the justices peppered the lawyers with hypotheticals designed to flesh about where and what lines the Court should draw. What if it was a report of a bomb? An atom bomb? A gun? The Court had held in a gun case, Florida v. J.L., an anonymous report of a juvenile in a plaid shirt carrying a gun was insufficient.

The general rule is that police may stop a person if they have an articulable reasonable suspicion to believe the person was, is, or is about to commit a crime. But a very important factor may have been overlooked by the justices and the lawyer arguing the case.

MR. KLEVEN: Right. If they can’t see any erratic driving still going on, then where is it going to go? They’re not going to prosecute for the recklessdriving that allegedly took place 19 miles away and they have followed that car for an additional -­
JUSTICE SCALIA: They could if the guy admitted it, you know.
MR. KLEVEN: Other than that, Your Honor -­
JUSTICE SCALIA: They could play Mutt and Jeff with him and he — oh, yeah, I did, yes.

The fallacy here is that if the caller is anonymous, even if the defendant admits the conduct, he cannot be prosecuted for it. The corpus delicti rule in criminal law requires that there must be corroboration of the corpus delicti to prosecute a defendant. “Corpus delicti” is a Latin phrase that very loosely translated means the body of the crime. A person cannot be convicted of a crime based solely on a statement admitting guilt. There must be some independent evidence that in fact a crime was committed. In the case of an anonymous report of a past crime such as a minor traffic violation, without any witness to come forward and testify under oath that he observed the defendant commit a crime, the defendant can’t be prosecuted for it.

So why allow the stop?
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Electronic signs all over Maryland are telling drivers about the new laws that kicked in today. What exactly is going on? Two offenses that were previously denominated as secondary actions have been changed to primary actions.

As the 90 day legislative report states:

Senate Bill 339/House Bill 753 (both passed) authorize primary enforcement of the prohibitions against the use of (1) a wireless communication device by a minor operating a motor vehicle; (2) a handheld telephone by an adult driver while operating a motor vehicle with a provisional license or learner’s permit; (3) a handheld telephone by an operator of a school vehicle that is carrying passengers and in motion; and (4) the fully licensed driver’s hands to use a handheld telephone, while the vehicle is in motion, except as specified. The bills repeal the provisions of law that limited enforcement to a secondary action when a driver is detained for another violation.

What this means is that previously a police officer could not stop a vehicle if he or she observed the listed violations. A person could only be charged under one of these provisions if the person was first stopped for a different violation. This law now allows officers to stop a vehicle based on observation of one of these violations alone.
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The Supreme Court today announced its opinion in Missouri v. McNeely and ruled that police in DUI investigations may not automatically avoid seeking a search warrant to obtain a blood sample where the defendant does not consent to a blood test. This is the third win as amicus curiae for the National College for DUI Defense which filed an amicus brief with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The Court said:

In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 456 (1948) (“We cannot . . . excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing by those who seek exemption from the constitutional mandate that the exigencies of the situation made [the search] imperative”).

It is interesting counting the votes again.

With respect to the proposition that there is no per se DUI exception to the warrant requirement in so far as non-consensual blood tests are concerned, the vote is 8-1 (only Thomas dissented from the holding). Since that was the only basis urged by Missouri for decision, the Missouri Supreme Court was affirmed. Missouri never appealed the question of whether the officer in this case acted reasonably.

As a result, Justice Kennedy wouldn’t touch when and whether it might be reasonable for an officer to get blood without a warrant. He is willing to wait for the next case to do so. In so far as there was a discussion about how to determine when and whether an exigency exists there were 3 votes for kind of a special totality test where if the warrant couldn’t be obtained without any delay at all, then it might not be needed (Roberts, Alito & Breyer). But Sotomayor, Kagan, Scalia and Ginsburg disagreed with this approach.
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Today, the Supreme Court heard argument in the case of Missouri v. McNeely. The case involved police obtaining a blood alcohol test without a warrant. The officer, who had previously had no difficulty obtaining warrants before getting blood samples in DUI cases had mistakenly believed that Missouri law had changed. Because there was nothing unusual about the case, the Missouri Supreme Court distinguished the 1966 Supreme Court case of Schmerber v. California, where due to the delay occasioned by an accident investigation and the defendant’s trip to a hospital, and the dissipation of alcohol in the blood, the Supreme Court allowed a warrantless blood draw. In this case, the Missouri Supreme Court held that the state had failed to show the special circumstances that would have allowed police to skip getting a warrant.

The State of Missouri requested review, posing the following question:

Whether a law enforcement officer may obtain a nonconsensual and warrantless blood sample from a drunk driver under the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement based upon the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream

McNeely was represented in the Supreme Court by Steven Shapiro, legal director of the ACLU. McNeely was supported by a number of amicus briefs, including one filed by the National College for DUI Defense and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and co-authored by Leonard R. Stamm, Jeffrey Green, and Jeffrey Beelaert.
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Today the Supreme Court granted certiorari sought by Missouri in Missouri v. McNeely. McNeely was suspected of DUI when police had blood withdrawn without a warrant. The Supreme Court of Missouri held that a warrant was required when the facts fell outside the narrow exception created in Schmerber v. California. See State v. McNeely.

Schmerber allowed a seizure of blood without a warrant due to the exigency created by dissipation of alcohol in the blood where an accident occurred and the suspected driver was taken to the hospital. The Supreme Court said:

We thus conclude that the present record shows no violation of petitioner’s right under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. It bears repeating, however, that we reach this judgment only on the facts of the present record. The integrity of an individual’s person is a cherished value of our society. That we today hold that the Constitution does not forbid the States minor intrusions into an individual’s body under stringently limited conditions in no way indicates that it permits more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions.

Since McNeely was not in an accident and was not taken to the hospital the Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed the trial court’s holding that a warrant was required.

The question to be addressed by the Supreme Court is whether to uphold the Missouri Supreme Court’s conclusion:

The patrolman here, however, was not faced with the “special facts” of Schmerber. Because there was no accident to investigate and there was no need to arrange for the medical treatment of any occupants, there was no delay that would threaten the destruction of evidence before a warrant could be obtained. Additionally, there was no evidence here that the patrolman would have been unable to obtain a warrant had he attempted to do so. The sole special fact present in this case, that blood-alcohol levels dissipate after drinking ceases, is not a per se exigency pursuant to Schmerber justifying an officer to order a blood test without obtaining a warrant from a neutral judge.

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