United States v. Manubolu

• Decision Date: 14 September 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-1871,20-1871
• Citation: 13 F.4th 57
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellant, v. Praneeth MANUBOLU, Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

13 F.4th 57

UNITED STATES of America, Appellant,

v.Praneeth MANUBOLU, Defendant, Appellee.

No. 20-1871

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

September 14, 2021

Julia M. Lipez, Assistant U.S. Attorney, with whom Halsey B. Frank, U.S. Attorney, was on brief, for appellant.

Walter F. McKee, with whom Matthew D. Morgan, Kurt C. Peterson, and McKee Law LLC, P.A., were on brief, for appellee.

Before Thompson, Kayatta, Circuit Judges, and Woodlock, District Judge.^*

THOMPSON, Circuit Judge.

This story of an early morning drunk-driving crash with multiple fatalities is all too familiar. But the scourge of drunk-driving deaths does not mean police can ignore the Fourth Amendment's requirement to obtain a warrant before drawing an individual's blood to test for blood alcohol content (BAC). Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770-71, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966). Exigent circumstances may permit warrantless blood draws before the body naturally dissipates the BAC. Mitchell v. Wisconsin, ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2525, 2533, 204 L.Ed.2d 1040 (2019) (plurality opinion) (noting a "spectrum" of exigent circumstances); Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141, 149, 133 S.Ct. 1552, 185 L.Ed.2d 696 (2013). This appeal asks us to consider whether the district court erred by suppressing BAC evidence from a warrantless blood draw because it found the police crossed the constitutional line. We respectfully disagree with the court's ruling and come out the opposite way.

I. Background¹

A. The Late-Night Investigation

At 2:48 A.M. on August 31, 2019, Officer Judson Cake of the Bar Harbor Police Department (BHPD) responded to a single car crash on Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park (a 19-or-so-mile road taking people to various sites in the park, which, like Bar Harbor, is located on Mt. Desert Island just off the coast of Maine).² Officer Cake got to the scene swiftly, arriving at 2:56 A.M. He observed Praneeth Manubolu standing on the side of the road, talking into a cellphone. Off in the woods, was a badly damaged, two-door, 2019 Dodge Challenger³ -- wrecked despite the road being dry, in good repair, and free of noticeable defects (it seems to have hit a tree at high speed). At about 3 A.M., Jerrod Hardy and Liam Harrington arrived, who were the two other BHPD officers on the overnight shift. At first glance, it appeared that the crash had crushed the two male passengers in the back seat of the car, and the officers could not get them out. The officers managed to remove a female from the front passenger seat and they began to perform CPR. The scene, as described by multiple officers, was "horrific."

When the EMTs showed up at 3:12 A.M., it was clear to the officers that all three passengers had already died. The rescue operation, according to the officers, turned into an investigation. Officer Cake had already begun photographing the scene, and Southwest Harbor Police Department (a neighboring precinct) sent resources to close down the Park Loop Road.⁴ Officers Cake and Hardy also questioned and observed Manubolu.

At about 3:24 A.M., National Park Ranger Brian Dominy made it to the scene. He and the BHPD officers determined the rangers would take the lead in the investigation, yet the BHPD officers remained to assist him in the early morning investigation because, in the words of Officer Cake, Ranger Dominy "didn't really have any help with him." Only three rangers who could respond lived on the island and it took them some time to arrive. According to Ranger Dominy, his team did not usually handle triple fatality accidents, and he felt "spread kind of thin." He started photographing and documenting the scene. He and BHPD also called in a crash scene reconstruction expert. Ranger Dominy needed to identify the bodies and work with the medical examiner, but he could not move the bodies until the reconstruction expert arrived. The two other available rangers showed up later, one at about 4 or 4:15 A.M. and one at 5 A.M. Ranger Dominy put the first (Deputy Chief Ranger Therese Picard) to work mapping and collecting data with the crash scene reconstruction expert,⁵ and he sent the second (Ranger Darren Belskis) to the hospital to bring Manubolu into custody once his medical care was completed.⁶ Ranger Dominy testified that he did not "clear the scene" until 7 A.M.

B. Figuring Out Manubolu's Inebriation

Once the passengers were clearly beyond rescue and the ambulance had arrived, Officer Hardy turned his attention to Manubolu, who was in the ambulance with the EMTs. During his chat with Manubolu, Officer Hardy observed that Manubolu's eyes were bloodshot and that there was an "odor of alcohol coming" from his breath. Manubolu admitted to consuming "two shots of whiskey" when he had gone to a tavern for dinner and drinks with his friends (the passengers in the car) before attending a dance club.⁷ It seems that the friends had thereafter walked around "stargazing" before hopping into Manubolu's car and driving to the campsite in Acadia where they were supposed to spend the night. Ranger Dominy knew that bars in Bar Harbor, where the group had been out, closed at 1 A.M. Given Manubolu's statements about drinking, he estimated that Manubolu's last drink was at about 12:45 A.M. (presumably last call).

The EMTs wanted Manubolu to go to the hospital to inspect him for internal injuries given the "traumatic crash." Manubolu initially resisted, but finally relented so long as Officer Hardy went along with him. Before Officer Hardy left, he relayed information about his conversation with and personal observations of Manubolu to Ranger Dominy and the two had a brief discussion about how to get evidence of Manubolu's BAC.

Notwithstanding the evident signs of intoxicated driving, the responding law enforcement officials did not conduct any field sobriety tests because of Manubolu's injuries. Officer Hardy explained that he feared Manubolu might have had a head or internal injury because Manubolu had a "goose egg-sized bump" below his right eye. Officer Cake also testified that Manubolu should have gone to the hospital (in part because the EMTs encouraged Manubolu to do so), even though, in addition to the possible head or internal injury, he only "had some cuts on his head" and did not look "too beat up from" the accident.

Manubolu's injuries also explain why he was not breathalyzed. Because the BHPD officers did not carry portable breathalyzers in their cruiser, they would have needed to bring Manubolu back to the station to conduct one. Given Manubolu's injuries, the severity of which was unknown, and the EMTs' recommendation, Officer Hardy concluded that the "goal [was] to get [him] to the hospital as soon as possible to be medically treated."⁸

Without the field sobriety test and without any breathalyzer, Ranger Dominy and Officer Hardy agreed that Hardy would go with Manubolu to the hospital to get a blood draw. A Maine statute at the time permitted officers to take warrantless blood draws from those suspected of drunk driving in a fatal accident even without exigent circumstances. See Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 29-A, § 2522.⁹ Because of that statute, Ranger Dominy believed that Officer Hardy, who had assumed physical custody of Manubolu, "had authority ... to obtain a blood sample" without a warrant and without exigent circumstances. Based on Supreme Court precedent, a National Park Service regulation, however, prohibited warrantless blood draws in national parks like Acadia absent some exigent circumstance. See 36 C.F.R. 4.23(c)(3).¹⁰ Ranger Dominy was also aware of the rule.

Officer Hardy and Manubolu left for the hospital in Bar Harbor around 3:53 A.M., arriving at about 4 A.M. Once at the hospital, Officer Hardy invoked the Maine statute. He ordered the warrantless blood draw without Manubolu's consent at 4:24 A.M., which was about 90 minutes after the crash took place.

C. Attempts (Or Lack Thereof) to Get a Warrant

No matter the federal regulation prohibiting warrantless blood draws absent exigent circumstances from suspected drunk drivers in federal parks, Ranger Dominy never discussed getting a federal or state warrant with any of the BHPD officers.

Ranger Dominy did try to reach the on-call Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) at 3:15 A.M. (about an hour before the warrantless blood draw), but the AUSA did not answer. Ranger Dominy tried another AUSA soon thereafter, who also did not pick up. He finally reached a third AUSA at 4:13 A.M. (minutes before the warrantless blood draw, but after Hardy and Manubolu had left for the hospital) who said he would try to reach the on-call AUSA. Officer Cake also tried to reach an on-call Hancock County Assistant District Attorney, but the person did not answer.

The district court found that Ranger Dominy did not begin to pursue a warrant until 4:45 A.M. (after the warrantless blood draw had already occurred) when the on-call AUSA finally phoned him back. It was only then that Ranger Dominy told the on-scene team they would need to get a search warrant. To get it under the protocols then in place, Ranger Dominy would have needed to provide an affidavit or statement of probable cause to an AUSA, who would have drafted the warrant for Ranger Dominy to review before it would have been transferred to a federal magistrate judge to consider. Rangers had telephonic capabilities, but they could not call magistrates directly (apparently a previous magistrate judge had not appreciated receiving direct calls from federal law enforcement officials). Ranger Dominy did not have a laptop in his truck, so he would have had to return to his office six miles from the accident to draft an affidavit.

In accordance with prior state law, none of the BHPD officers attempted to get a warrant. But, if they had, the state warrant procedure was quite onerous. The BHPD did not have electronic or telephonic warrant capabilities, so they would have had to return to the station to draft and to print the application and affidavit...