Fourth Amendment – Under some circumstances, law enforcement’s need to take a suspect’s blood for testing can constitute an “exigent circumstance” that is exempted from the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement
Law enforcement arrested Gerald Mitchell after administering a breath test that indicated Mitchell was driving while intoxicated. The officers took Mitchell to a hospital, where his blood was drawn, without a warrant and while he was unconscious. Mitchell moved to suppress the results of the blood test as an “unreasonable search” under the Fourth Amendment. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed his conviction, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari.
A plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court held that conducting the blood test on Mitchell while he was passed out was permissible under the “exigent circumstance” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Writing for the plurality, Justice Alito wrote that it was immaterial that most of the lower courts and the state of Wisconsin had been arguing that the search was allowed under Wisconsin’s implied consent law, under the assumption that there were no exigent circumstances, as there were sufficient facts here to create a rule “for an entire category of cases” where a motorist suspected of drunk driving is unconscious and cannot be given a breath test. Detailing the safety interests at stake in preventing DUIs and the limited time to gather evidence of intoxication, the plurality held that the exigent-circumstances exception “almost always permits a blood test…when a driver is unconscious.” The Court remanded to give Mitchell the opportunity to show that his was a rare case where a defendant can show “that his blood would not have been drawn if police had not been seeking BAC information” and where police could have reasonably sought a warrant.
Concurring in the judgment, Justice Thomas argued that there should be a per se rule under which, regardless of whether the driver is conscious, the “natural metabolization of alcohol in the blood stream” creates an inherent exigent circumstance that justifies a warrantless blood test. The plurality’s presumption, he wrote, would “rarely be rebutted” but would still impose a burden on officers.
Dissenting, Justice Sotomayor argued that the Constitution requires that officers to get a warrant for a blood draw of a DUI suspect “if possible.” She noted that Wisconsin conceded that officers had time to get a warrant for Mitchell’s blood and that no exigent circumstances were present. She also argued that the plurality was contrary to Supreme Court precedent holding that there is no categorical exigency exception for blood draws and that exigent circumstances must be justified on a case-by-case basis.
Justice Gorsuch dissented as well, arguing that the Court had granted certiorari to review Wisconsin’s implied consent rule as applied to unconscious motorists, and he asserted that the plurality had declined to answer the question presented.
On certiorari from the Supreme Court of Wisconsin
Opinion by Alito, joined by Roberts, Breyer, and Kavanaugh
Concurring Opinion by Thomas
Dissenting Opinion by Sotomayor, joined by Ginsburg and Kagan
Dissenting Opinion by Gorsuch