From Winston Salem Journal
In most cases, police officers have to get a warrant to search your home, but in North Carolina, they don’t need one to get a sample of your blood if you’re accused of driving while impaired.
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether or not that’s constitutional in a case from Missouri. The court hasn’t ruled yet, but whatever decision it makes will have wide implications in North Carolina, which is among about half the states that allow warrantless searches in DWI cases. ….MORE
Former Missouri DWI Judge and ACLU Lawyer Talk Warrant Requirement For Breathalyzer;
Scalia Balks
Prosecutors have all the power in these cases in the first place — the fact is prosecutors have been getting guilty verdicts withOUT alcohol-percentage tests for more years than they have with them. We cannot continually chip away the 4th Amendment
From Market Watch
ST. LOUIS, Jan. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — DWI arrests make up an average of nearly ten percent of all arrests in Missouri each year. Today the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether Missouri’s police must obtain a warrant before forcefully taking blood from a DWI arrestee.
Missouri law already compels DWI defendants to submit to a blood, urine or breathalyzer test at the risk of losing their license anywhere from 90 days to a year. Apparently, however, the loss of one’s license is not enough for Missouri prosecutors who contend that they very much need alcohol-percentage evidence to get DWI convictions. Some Missouri prosecutors want police to have qualified medical personnel take blood from non-willing suspects without a court’s order (a warrant).
Long time DWI Lawyer and former Judge Mike Carter pointed out that: …..MORE
From The Washington Post:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed unlikely to allow police to routinely force suspected drunk drivers to give a blood sample without the officers at least trying to obtain a warrant from a judge.
Justices across the ideological spectrum seemed to recoil during oral arguments from what Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. described as the “pretty scary image of somebody restrained, and, you know, a representative of the state approaching them with a needle.” ….MORE
