The Case Of Missouri V. Mcneely

Catherine Dimitroff
3 August 2014
“Is It Truly an Emergency? Missouri v. McNeely and Warrantless Blood Draws”

Introduction: The article “Is It Truly an Emergency? Missouri v. McNeely and Warrantless Blood Draws” discusses the constitutionality of warrantless blood draws in conjunction with automobile accidents that may or may not be the result of driving under the influence of alcohol. In Missouri v. McNeely the U.S. Supreme court approached the constitutional requirement that all searches must be conducted with probable cause within regards to the accident to support any arrest based on driving under the influence. The article reviews the case of Schmerber v. California as well in its critical overview of the implications of the Fourth Amendment

California were simply that given the time constraint with which to investigate the crime scene and allow for transportation of the offender to a medical facility there was no time to obtain a warrant. These facts allowed the warrant-less blood draw to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. This was the precedent until the case of Missouri v. McNeely. In the case of Missouri v. McNeely the offender Tyler McNeely was arrested upon the suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol. These suspicions were further supported by McNeely’s failure to pass four field-sobriety tests. He refused the preliminary Breathalyzer test both in the field and after arriving at the police station. He was then taken to a hospital where he was subjected to a nonconsensual evidentiary blood draw. The test was performed 23 minutes after the initial traffic stop and tested for a blood-alcohol concentration over the legal

This was where the Missouri Supreme Court then ruled that the case of Schmerber v. California “requires more than mere dissipation of blood-alcohol evidence to support a warrantless blood draw.” Based on this ruling the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear this case so as to resolve the split between the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and the state courts. The Court decided that there are three categorical search warrant exceptions: search incident to arrest, the motor vehicle arrest, and consent. The Court also decided however that searches without warrants performed under threat of imminent destruction of evidence can only be exempt upon examination of the circumstances surrounding the search. So because McNeely’s blood-draw was performed under non-emergency circumstances it was a violation of his “right to be free from unreasonable searches of his person.” My thought is if all that needed to exist to prove an exigent situation was injury requiring medical evaluation then the requirement of “special circumstance” could have been fulfilled if he had tripped on his shoe lace during one of his four field sobriety