Jurist

The US Supreme Court [official website] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF] Wednesday in Missouri v. McNeely [transcript, PDF; JURIST report] on whether the Fourth Amendment [text] allows a police officer to take a warrantless blood sample to test for alcohol levels. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled [opinion text] that the exigency standard set in Schmerber v. California [opinion text] for warrantless intrusions of the body, "requires more than the mere dissipation of blood-alcohol evidence." John Koester, appearing on behalf of Missouri, argued that securing evidence quickly was paramount to a drunk driving investigation because alcohol is continuously removed from the blood by the body and thus securing a warrant to obtain a blood sample would be overly burdensome. The court questioned why a blood sample was necessary when a breathalyzer would provide adequate results. Koester argued that the warrantless search was reasonable, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned the reasonableness of the search given how intrusive it was. The justices also pointed out that many jurisdictions have implemented a streamlined process where it only takes officers 15 to 20 minutes to obtain a warrant in drunk driving cases, whereas Koester had stated that in this case it would have taken the officer 90 to 120 minutes to obtain a warrant. Sotomayor suggested that it would be improper for the court to reward police in inefficient jurisdictions when other jurisdictions had demonstrated that they could obtain warrants adequately. Chief Justice John Roberts expressed the court's reluctance with giving police the ability to obtain blood samples without a warrant: "it's a pretty scary image of somebody restrained, and ... a representative of the State approaching them with a needle."