Dale v. State
| Decision Date | 12 June 2009 |
| Docket Number | No. A-9834.,A-9834. |
| Citation | 209 P.3d 1038 |
| Parties | Jimmie DALE, Appellant, v. STATE of Alaska, Appellee. |
| Court | Alaska Court of Appeals |
Christine S. Schleuss, Law Office of Christine Schleuss, Anchorage, for the Appellant.
Kenneth M. Rosenstein, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Special Prosecutions and Appeals, Anchorage, and Talis J. Colberg, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: COATS, Chief Judge, and MANNHEIMER and BOLGER, Judges.
Jimmie Dale drove his truck off the road and down a 100-foot embankment, causing serious physical injury to the two passengers in his car. Dale was charged with driving under the influence,1 driving while his license was suspended,2 two counts of first-degree assault3 against the two passengers, two counts of third-degree assault4 against the same passengers, and failing to remain on the scene and render aid after a motor vehicle accident.5 Dale moved to suppress the results of a blood test from a blood sample that the police required him to provide at the hospital after the accident. Dale argued that because his blood was taken without his consent and without a search warrant, it was taken in violation of his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures under the United States and Alaska Constitutions.6
Superior Court Judge Eric Smith denied Dale's motion to suppress. Although Judge Smith concluded that there was enough time for the investigating trooper to call a magistrate and obtain a warrant, he held that exigent circumstances exist as a matter of law when an officer has sufficient probable cause under AS 28.35.031(g) and State v. Blank7 to search for intoxicants in a person's body. We affirm Judge Smith's decision that exigent circumstances existed as a matter of law.
Factual and procedural background
On October 4, 2005, at approximately 10:45 p.m., Dale drove off the road and down a 100-foot embankment in Palmer. There were two women in the truck with Dale — Lori Osborn and Leah Bradford. Alaska State Trooper Gregory Pealatere and Sergeant Troy Shuey responded to the scene. By the time they arrived, emergency medical personnel were already at the scene. They told Trooper Pealatere that the women in the car had been seriously injured and had stated that Jimmie Dale was the driver of the car and had left on foot. Sergeant Shuey found Dale a short distance away. Dale was swaying as he talked to Sergeant Shuey, his speech was slurred, and he had bloodshot, watery eyes. Sergeant Shuey could smell alcohol on Dale and was "certain that [Dale] had been drinking alcohol at some point during the evening." Dale was taken to the hospital with Osborn and Bradford.
Trooper Pealatere and Sergeant Shuey investigated and documented the scene of the accident. After investigating the scene of the accident, Trooper Pealatere proceeded to the hospital, where he interviewed Bradford at about 1:04 a.m. The trooper estimated that the interview with Bradford lasted about five to ten minutes. At some point in the next half hour, Trooper Pealatere spoke with Sergeant Shuey, and they determined that Dale was intoxicated and was the driver of a vehicle that had been involved in an accident that caused serious physical injury to the passengers, and that they had probable cause to arrest him at that time. Sergeant Shuey instructed Trooper Pealatere to get a blood sample from Dale, by force if necessary. Sergeant Shuey told Trooper Pealatere that a warrant was not necessary because AS 28.35.031(g), the implied-consent statute, authorized the blood draw, so Trooper Pealatere did not attempt to obtain a warrant before instructing the hospital staff to take a blood sample from Dale. The blood sample was taken around 2:00 a.m. The results indicated that Dale had a blood-alcohol level between .07 and .08 when he was tested.
Before trial, Dale moved to suppress the evidence of the blood test, contending that it was taken in violation of his constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. After an evidentiary hearing at which Trooper Pealatere testified, Judge Smith issued an order denying Dale's motion to suppress. Judge Smith found that Trooper Pealatere had enough time to call a magistrate, that he probably could have obtained a search warrant by telephone in about twenty to thirty minutes, and that, had he done so, Dale's blood probably would have been drawn at about the same time. However, Judge Smith found that exigent circumstances existed as a matter of law and the police accordingly did not have to obtain a warrant before having Dale's blood drawn. He therefore denied Dale's motion to suppress the results of the blood test.
A jury convicted Dale of all of the charges. Dale appeals Judge Smith's denial of his motion to suppress. He asks this court to reverse all of his convictions except his conviction for driving while his license was suspended.
Legal background of the question whether exigent circumstances exist as a matter of law in blood-alcohol cases
We begin our legal analysis with Schmerber v. California,8 a case decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1966. Schmerber upheld the seizure of blood without a warrant under the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. Schmerber has led to two opposing interpretations by various state supreme courts. Some states have concluded that Schmerber holds that investigating officers are never required to obtain a warrant when sufficient probable cause exists in suspected drunk-driving cases and the method used to extract the suspect's blood is reasonable.9 Other states have interpreted Schmerber to require a case-specific analysis, taking into consideration the totality of the circumstances in determining whether exigent circumstances exist, before the police can seize a person's blood without a warrant.10
In the leading Alaska case on this subject, State v. Blank,11 the Alaska Supreme Court declined to decide which interpretation of Schmerber was correct.
In Schmerber, the United States Supreme Court held that a compulsory blood test is a seizure covered by the Fourth Amendment.12 Schmerber was convicted of DUI after he was involved in a single-car accident and transported to the hospital.13 At the hospital, Schmerber was arrested and the police ordered a blood test, which revealed that Schmerber had been drinking.14 After holding that the blood test implicated Schmerber's Fourth Amendment rights, the United States Supreme Court went on to analyze whether the "police were justified in requiring [Schmerber] to submit to the blood test," and "whether the means and procedures employed in taking his blood respected relevant Fourth Amendment standards of reasonableness."15
Although Schmerber had been placed under arrest before his blood was drawn, the Supreme Court concluded that "the mere fact of a lawful arrest does not end our inquiry."16 The Court noted that the justifications for searches incident to a lawful arrest had "little applicability with respect to searches involving intrusions beyond the body's surface," and held that "[t]he interests in human dignity and privacy" protected by the Fourth Amendment require a clear indication that evidence of a crime will be found before such an intrusion can be justified.17
The Supreme Court went on to discuss the warrant requirement. Noting that search warrants are normally required for searches of homes, the Court held that "absent an emergency, no less could be required where intrusions into the human body are concerned."18 The Court noted that the purpose of the warrant requirement — to ensure that the decision to search is made by a neutral magistrate — is "indisputable and great" in the context of intrusions into a person's body.19
Nevertheless, the Supreme Court went on to find that the exigent circumstances exception applied in Schmerber's case:
The officer in the present case, however, might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened "the destruction of evidence." ... We are told that the percentage of alcohol in the blood begins to diminish shortly after drinking stops, as the body functions to eliminate it from the system. Particularly in a case such as this, where time had to be taken to bring the accused to a hospital and to investigate the scene of the accident, there was no time to seek out a magistrate and secure a warrant. Given these special facts, we conclude that the attempt to secure evidence of blood alcohol content in this case was an appropriate incident to petitioner's arrest.[20]
As noted above, this language has led to two interpretations. The first interpretation is that, because "the percentage of alcohol in the blood begins to diminish shortly after drinking stops," this circumstance alone creates an exigency. The other interpretation is that the State must show, under a totality of the circumstances test, that an exigency existed in a specific case. In the second approach, the fact that the percentage of alcohol in the blood is diminishing is merely one factor to consider in determining whether there were exigent circumstances.
In State v. Blank,21 the Alaska Supreme Court interpreted AS 28.35.031(g), which provides that a person who operates a motor vehicle is considered to have given consent to a chemical test of his breath, blood, and urine if he "is involved in a motor vehicle accident that causes death or serious physical injury to another person."22
The supreme court construed AS 28.35.031(g) narrowly in order to avoid constitutional problems.23 The court held that AS 28.35.031(g) is constitutional "in context of warrantless searches for breath or blood in accident cases involving death or serious physical injury when probable cause to search exists and the search falls within a recognized...
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State v. Meitler, 111,697.
...extracting the blood sample must be reasonable. This is a common formulation of the Schmerber holding. See, e.g., Dale v. State, 209 P.3d 1038, 1039 n. 7 (Alaska App.2009) ; State v. Geiss, 70 So.3d 642, 646 (Fla.Dist.App.2011) ; State v. Tullberg, 359 Wis.2d 421, 436–38, 857 N.W.2d 120, 12......