Missouri v. McNeely

(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2012 1 Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES Syllabus MISSOURI v. MCNEELY CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF MISSOURI No. 11–1425. Argued January 9, 2013—Decided April 17, 2013 Respondent McNeely was stopped by a Missouri police officer for speed- ing and crossing the centerline. After declining to take a breath test to measure his blood alcohol concentration (BAC), he was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital for blood testing. The officer never at- tempted to secure a search warrant. McNeely refused to consent to the blood test, but the officer directed a lab technician to take a sam- ple. McNeely’s BAC tested well above the legal limit, and he was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI). He moved to suppress the blood test result, arguing that taking his blood without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The trial court agreed, con- cluding that the exigency exception to the warrant requirement did not apply because, apart from the fact that McNeely’s blood alcohol was dissipating, no circumstances suggested that the officer faced an emergency. The State Supreme Court affirmed, relying on Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, in which this Court upheld a DWI suspect’s warrantless blood test where the officer “might rea- sonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circum- stances, threatened ‘the destruction of evidence,’ ” id., at 770. This case, the state court found, involved a routine DWI investigation where no factors other than the natural dissipation of blood alcohol suggested that there was an emergency, and, thus, the nonconsensu- al warrantless test violated McNeely’s right to be free from unrea- sonable searches of his person. Held: The judgment is affirmed. 358 S. W. 3d 65, affirmed. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II–A, II–B, and IV, concluding that in drunk-driving inves- tigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does 2 MISSOURI v. MCNEELY Syllabus not constitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conduct- ing a blood test without a warrant. Pp. 4–13, 20–23. (a) The principle that a warrantless search of the person is reason- able only if it falls within a recognized exception, see, e.g., United States v. Robinson, 414 U. S. 218, 224, applies here, where the search involved a compelled physical intrusion beneath McNeely’s skin and into his veins to obtain a blood sample to use as evidence in a crimi- nal investigation. One recognized exception “applies when ‘ “the exi- gencies of the situation” make the needs of law enforcement so com- pelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable.’ ” Kentucky v. King, 563 U. S. ___, ___. This Court looks to the totality of circumstances in determining whether an exigency exits. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U. S. 398, 406. Applying this approach in Schmerber, the Court found a warrantless blood test reasonable af- ter considering all of the facts and circumstances of that case and carefully basing its holding on those specific facts, including that al- cohol levels decline after drinking stops and that testing was delayed while officers transported the injured suspect to the hospital and in- vestigated the accident scene. Pp. 4–8. (b) The State nonetheless seeks a per se rule, contending that exi- gent circumstances necessarily exist when an officer has probable cause to believe a person has been driving under the influence of al- cohol because BAC evidence is inherently evanescent. Though a per- son’s blood alcohol level declines until the alcohol is eliminated, it does not follow that the Court should depart from careful case-by- case assessment of exigency. When officers in drunk-driving investi- gations can reasonably obtain a warrant before having a blood sam- ple drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. See McDonald v. United States, 335 U. S. 451, 456. Circumstances may make obtaining a warrant impractical such that the alcohol’s dissipa- tion will support an exigency, but that is a reason to decide each case on its facts, as in Schmerber, not to accept the “considerable overgen- eralization” that a per se rule would reflect, Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U. S. 385, 393. Blood testing is different in critical respects from other destruction-of-evidence cases. Unlike a situation where, e.g., a suspect has control over easily disposable evidence, see Cupp v. Mur- phy, 412 U. S. 291, 296, BAC evidence naturally dissipates in a grad- ual and relatively predictable manner. Moreover, because an officer must typically take a DWI suspect to a medical facility and obtain a trained medical professional’s assistance before having a blood test conducted, some delay between the time of the arrest or accident and time of the test is inevitable regardless of whether a warrant is ob- tained. The State’s rule also fails to account for advances in the 47 Cite as: 569 U. S. ____ (2013) 3 Syllabus years since Schmerber was decided that allow for the more expedi- tious processing of warrant applications, particularly in contexts like drunk-driving investigations where the evidence supporting probable cause is simple. The natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood may support an exigency finding in a specific case, as it did in Schmerber, but it does not do so categorically. Pp. 8–13. (c) Because the State sought a per se rule here, it did not argue that there were exigent circumstances in this particular case. The argu- ments and the record thus do not provide the Court with an adequate framework for a detailed discussion of all the relevant factors that can be taken into account in determining the reasonableness of act- ing without a warrant. It suffices to say that the metabolization of alcohol in the bloodstream and the ensuing loss of evidence are among the factors that must be considered in deciding whether a warrant is required. Pp. 20–23. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, joined by JUSTICE SCALIA, JUSTICE GINSBURG, and JUSTICE KAGAN, concluded in Part III that other arguments ad- vanced by the State and amici in support of a per se rule are unper- suasive. Their concern that a case-by-case approach to exigency will not provide adequate guidance to law enforcement officers may make the desire for a bright-line rule understandable, but the Fourth Amendment will not tolerate adoption of an overly broad categorical approach in this context. A fact-intensive, totality of the circum- stances, approach is hardly unique within this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. See, e.g., Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U. S. 119, 123–125. They also contend that the privacy interest implicated here is minimal. But motorists’ diminished expectation of privacy does not diminish their privacy interest in preventing a government agent from piercing their skin. And though a blood test conducted in a medical setting by trained personnel is less intrusive than other bodily invasions, this Court has never retreated from its recognition that any compelled intrusion into the human body implicates signifi- cant, constitutionally protected privacy interests. Finally, the gov- ernment’s general interest in combating drunk driving does not justi- fy departing from the warrant requirement without showing exigent circumstances that make securing a warrant impractical in a particu- lar case. Pp. 15–20. SOTOMAYOR, J., announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with r