State v. Rodriguez

• Decision Date: 30 January 2007
• Docket Number: No. 20040566.,20040566.
• Citation: 2007 UT 15,156 P.3d 771
• Parties: STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Petitioner, v. Heather Jo RODRIGUEZ, Defendant and Respondent.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

156 P.3d 771

2007 UT 15

STATE of Utah, Plaintiff and Petitioner, v. Heather Jo RODRIGUEZ, Defendant and Respondent.

No. 20040566.

Supreme Court of Utah.

January 30, 2007.

Rehearing Denied March 28, 2007.

Mark L. Shurtleff, Att'y Gen., Matthew D. Bates, Asst. Att'y Gen., Salt Lake City, for plaintiff.

Shannon N. Romero, Lori Seppi, Salt Lake City, for defendant.

Janice L. Frost, Salt Lake City, for amici Utah Peace officers' Ass'n, Utah Sheriff's Ass'n, Dep't of Public Safety, Statewide Ass'n of Prosecutors.

On Certiorari to the Utah Court of Appeals

NEHRING, Justice:

¶ 1 After a fatal traffic accident claimed the life of her passenger, Heather Jo Rodriguez was charged with automobile homicide. The district court denied Ms. Rodriguez's motion to suppress blood-alcohol evidence obtained in a warrantless search following the accident; the court of appeals later reversed. We granted certiorari to answer the narrow question of whether dissipation of alcohol in the blood, without more, created an exigent circumstance under the Fourth Amendment justifying the warrantless extraction of a blood sample from Ms. Rodriguez.

¶ 2 Because we found that it does not, we asked the parties to provide additional briefing on the question of whether the court of appeals correctly held that the totality of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Rodriguez's blood draw failed to create an exigency sufficient to justify a warrantless search. Having now considered both questions, we decline the invitation to assign presumptive exigent status to warrantless blood draws, but we hold that the totality of the circumstances in this case justified the extraction of blood from Ms. Rodriguez without a warrant and therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶ 3 Heather Jo Rodriguez was driving south on Main Street in Salt Lake City with a passenger, Terry Stewart, on May 9, 2001. Between 4:45 and 4:50 p.m., Ms. Rodriguez made an abrupt left turn into the path of an oncoming school bus. The bus broadsided Ms. Rodriguez's car, critically injuring both Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. Stewart. Paramedics arrived on the scene and transported the critically injured Ms. Rodriguez to LDS Hospital. Ms. Stewart sustained severe head injuries and was considered by paramedics to be near death. She had to be extricated from the mangled car and transported to University of Utah Medical Center.

¶ 4 When Salt Lake City police officers arrived to investigate the accident, paramedics were in the process of transporting the women to their respective hospitals. A paramedic told officers that the two women smelled of alcohol. Police officers located Ms. Stewart's purse at the scene. It contained an opened, partially-empty bottle of vodka. A supervising officer then arrived and was informed of the circumstances surrounding the accident. He immediately contacted police dispatch with instructions to send an officer to obtain a blood sample from Ms. Rodriguez that could be tested for alcohol content.

¶ 5 Dispatch directed an officer to the hospital to "witness a blood draw" from the driver. The officer first mistakenly went to the University of Utah Medical Center where he was informed that Ms. Stewart, not Ms. Rodriguez, was being treated.

¶ 6 The officer then drove to LDS Hospital where he located Ms. Rodriguez in the emergency room awaiting a CT scan. He detected evidence of inebriation, including the odor of alcohol on her breath, slurred speech, red eyes, and uncooperative and belligerent behavior.

¶ 7 The officer waited between twenty and twenty-five minutes in the CT room for a technician to arrive and draw Ms. Rodriguez's blood. The blood was taken from an IV line that the hospital staff had previously inserted into Ms. Rodriguez's arm for medical purposes. Later testing revealed that Ms. Rodriguez had a blood-alcohol level of .39, nearly five times the legal limit.

¶ 8 The passenger, Ms. Stewart, died as a result of her injuries. Ms. Rodriguez recovered and was arrested and charged with automobile homicide. Ms. Rodriguez moved to suppress the evidence obtained from the warrantless blood draw. The district court denied her motion. Ms. Rodriguez then pled guilty to the automobile homicide charge, reserving the right to appeal the district court's denial of her motion to suppress the blood evidence.

¶ 9 Before the Utah Court of Appeals, Ms. Rodriguez argued that the district court erred because the State (1) did not demonstrate that the officer had probable cause to believe she had committed an alcohol-related offense and (2) had failed to show that the warrantless blood draw was justified by exigent circumstances. The court of appeals found that exigent circumstances were not present sufficient to justify a warrantless blood draw and reversed the district court. Because it decided the case on the absence of exigent circumstances, the court of appeals did not reach the issue of probable cause.

¶ 10 In support of its holding, the court of appeals noted that "exigent circumstances will be found, where the situation involves blood-alcohol evidence, only when the totality of the circumstances supports a finding that the officer was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened the destruction of evidence." State v. Rodriguez, 2004 UT App 198, ¶ 14, 93 P.3d 854 (citation and quotation marks omitted). The court of appeals conceded that because the human body metabolizes alcohol, its presence in the bloodstream is transitory. The court concluded, however, that the evanescent nature of blood-alcohol evidence is not sufficient, standing alone, to create an exigent circumstance justifying a warrantless intrusion into the body to take blood. Id.

¶ 11 Having declined to assign per se exigent status to blood-alcohol tests, the court of appeals looked for the presence of other circumstances which in their totality justified the seizure of Ms. Rodriguez's blood without a warrant. Looking to its own precedents, the court considered

"the distance to the nearest magistrate, the availability of a telephonic warrant, the feasibility of a stake-out or other form of surveillance while a warrant is being obtained, the seriousness of the underlying alcohol-related offense, the commission of another offense such as fleeing the scene, the ongoing and continuing nature of an investigation, the extent of probable cause, and the conduct of the investigating officers."

Id. ¶ 16 (quoting City of Orem v. Henrie, 868 P.2d 1384, 1392 (Utah Ct.App.1994)).

¶ 12 The court observed that it was "clear from the record that the decision to extract Rodriguez's blood was made soon after the accident occurred, at a time when courts are open and search warrants can be readily requested either in person or by telephone." Id. ¶ 19 (citation and quotation marks omitted). In other words, the State did not consider the feasibility of obtaining an expedited search warrant. The court of appeals found that the State presented no evidence that "anyone, at any time, had assessed the difficulty and time required to obtain a proper search warrant." Id.

¶ 13 Drawing largely on the fact that the very concept of a warrant had apparently not entered the consciousness of the police officers conducting the accident investigation, coupled with the fact that the police developed probable cause to believe that Ms. Rodriguez had been consuming alcohol at a time when the courts were open and a search warrant could have easily been requested personally or by telephone, the court of appeals held that the State failed to meet its burden of proving exigency. Id. ¶ 20.

¶ 14 In our certiorari review of the court of appeals' decision, we will first explore whether our courts may be freed from assessing the "totality of the circumstances" when faced with a Fourth Amendment challenge to a warrantless blood draw because the presence of alcohol, without more, establishes sufficient justification for the search. We will next turn to whether, in the absence of a presumptive exigency, Ms. Rodriguez's blood draw was nevertheless justified under the totality of the circumstances. We conduct both questions ceding no deference to the court of appeals. The first is a pure question of law. We review anew the second question because it concerns the proper application of constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures. State v. Brake, 2004 UT 95, ¶ 15, 103 P.3d 699.

ANALYSIS

I. EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCE

¶ 15 The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution ensures "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures." U.S. Const. amend. IV. Reasonableness is the key to any Fourth Amendment analysis. See Pennsylvania v Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 108-09, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977).¹ The protection afforded by the Fourth Amendment is intended to assure each individual that as a nation we prize personal dignity and privacy and will not countenance arbitrary intrusions on those valued interests. The Fourth Amendment mandates a warrant based on probable cause and reviewed by an impartial magistrate as the operational safeguard against arbitrary police intrusions. A search or seizure conducted without the aid of a warrant is per se unreasonable. See, e.g., United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 701, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983) ("In the ordinary case, the Court has viewed a seizure of personal property as per se unreasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment unless it is accomplished pursuant to a judicial warrant issued upon probable cause and particularly describing the items to be seized.").

¶ 16 A reasonable warrantless search can occur only when the legitimate state interest served by the intrusion outweighs individual interests shielded by the Fourth Amendment. Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 654, 99 S.Ct. 1391, 59 L.Ed.2d 660 (1...