Articles Posted in DUI

Last month I spoke in Freeport at a seminar for lawyers on the topic of defending OUI cases in Maine. Part of the lecture I gave concerned a 2013 United States Supreme Court case called Missouri v. McNeely, 133 S.Ct. 1552. McNeely is a Fourth Amendment search warrant case dealing with nonconsensual blood testing in drunk-driving cases.

Tyler McNeely was stopped by a state trooper for speeding and crossing the centerline. After performing poorly on the Standardized Field Sobriety Tests, he declined a portable breath test and was arrested for OUI. At the station, he refused to take a breath test and was subsequently transported to the hospital for a blood draw. He did not consent to have his blood drawn, nor did the officer attempt to secure a search warrant. Nevertheless, his blood was subsequently drawn, which alleged a high blood alcohol content.

I will save you the procedural history, but it’s safe to say that on appeal, the Missouri state prosecutors went for a broad, sweeping rule of law that would allow police officers to draw blood under any circumstance, without a warrant or without the consent of the person arrested. They refused to try finding a middle ground; they wanted it all their way.

The Supreme Court recently decided a case Missouri v. McNeely, 567 U.S. ____ (2012) holding that police officers cannot normally conduct blood-alcohol tests without a warrant. After being stopped by a police officer for speeding and crossing the centerline the officer noticed several signs that McNeely was intoxicated, including McNeely’s bloodshot eyes, his slurred speech, and the smell of alcohol on his breath.

McNeely admitted to the officer that he had consumed “a couple of beers” at a bar, and he appeared unsteady on his feet when he exited the truck. The officer conducted field sobriety tests on McNeely who performed poorly on the tests and declined to use a portable breath-test device to measure his blood alcohol concentration (BAC).

The officer then placed him under arrest and transported McNeely to a nearby hospital for blood testing. Upon arrival at the hospital, the officer asked McNeely whether he would consent to a blood test. Reading from a standard implied consent form, the officer explained to McNeely that under state law refusal to submit voluntarily to the test would lead to the immediate revocation of his driver’s license for one year and could be used against him in a future prosecution.

The author of one of the greatest home runs in baseball history, thirty-seven years ago Sunday, was arrested for DUI/OUI/DWI on Monday, October 24th. Hall of Fame catcher Carlton Fisk, a god to Red Sox fans like me after his homerun in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, was arrested in New Lenox, Illinois, refused to take a breath test and had an open bottle of vodka in the truck which was located in a cornfield.

If you are sitting in your vehicle in the middle of a cornfield and are charged with DWI/OUI/DUI here in Maine, you need to consult with a lawyer to help defend your case. How will the DAs Office prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt? Operation of a motor vehicle is an element of the crime that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Was there actual operation? Did the driver admit to operation? In Maine, operation requires a person to either have power or attempt to put power to the wheels. 29-A M.R.S. § 2401(6); State v. Sullivan 146 ME 381 (1951). Is the vehicle in park, or was it in gear with the driver’s foot on the brake?

How will the government overcome the subsequent drinking issue? If there is an open bottle of liquor in the vehicle with the driver, how will they prove that any alcohol onboard the driver wasn’t consumed post-accident? Do they even know how long the driver was sitting in the cornfield?

The 4th Amendment has been resuscitated!!  Hopefully you recall back in September of 2010, I wrote about GPS tracking devices and a recent decision from the District of Columbia Circuit (“GPS Tracking Devices – A Warrant or Not A Warrant – That is Now the Question”).  Well, on Monday we got our answer; kind of….

In United States v. Antoine Jones, #10-1259 United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) Justice Scalia wrote the decision of the Court, that said the Government’s installation of the GPS tracking device on the suspect’s vehicle to monitor it’s movement was a search within the meaning of the 4th Amendment, and thus raised the issue of whether a warrant was required prior to the installation.  I said “kind of….” because whether this search required a warrant was not answered.

The Court rejected the government’s argument that the attachment of a GPS device was not a search, but did not define how long or if you could track the vehicle with or without a warrant and what violates a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court declined to opine on other details, like whether a warrant requirement applied to tracking cell phones. It appears that Justice Sotomayor was certainly ready to cast a much wider net and restrict government activity.

So what does the Supreme Court’s decision in Bullcoming v. New Mexico mean for the country at large? The answer is that no longer can scientific evidence be introduced into a case as if it were non-testimonial evidence. Testing and subsequent analysis of forensic evidence, far from being rote, requires a level of scientific expertise that, on occasion, may come into question. It is therefore imperative that whoever performs testing on any manner of sample must be made available for testimony so that the accuracy and reliability of the conclusions may be fully investigated. Although this doesn’t pose much of a problem for us here in Maine, many larger states may find themselves in a predicament now that highly technical and crucial forensic evidence can not be presented to the court as though it was generated by some nameless pencil-pusher.