Minneapolis DWI Lawyer Blogs on Minnesota DWI: This Week's Featured Minnesota DWI Case

The Minnesota DWI Case of the Week is State v. Fawcett (Decided January 11, 2016, Published, Minnesota Court of Appeals) which stands for the proposition that if the police obtain a warrant to obtain a blood sample, they do not need to obtain a separate search warrant to have the blood sample analyzed for other drugs by the BCA Lab.

In Fawcett, the Defendant ran a red light and was hit by another vehicle.  When the police arrived, they noticed the Defendant smelled of alcohol and Ms. Fawcett admitted drinking at the local VFW.  Because the crash involved possible injuries to the occupants of the other vehicle, the police sought and obtained a search warrant which authorized a blood sample to be taken from Fawcett and be "forwarded to an approved lab for testing."

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) subsequently issued a toxicology report stating that Fawcett's blood contained no alcohol and that an additional toxicology report would follow.  A second BCA report indicated the presence in Fawcett's blood of THC and Alprazolam, both of which are controlled substances.

The Defendant was charged with Criminal Vehicular Operation and Fawcett moved to suppress all evidence of the presence of drugs in the blood sample.  The district court granted Fawcett's motion to suppress the evidence finding that the blood sample was lawfully obtained under the search warrant and that testing the blood for alcohol was lawful but that testing the blood for the presence of drugs was unlawful.

On appeal by the State, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, holding:

Once a blood sample has been lawfully removed from a person's body, a person loses an expectation of privacy in the blood sample, and a subsequent chemical analysis of the blood sample is, therefore, not a distinct Fourth Amendment event. The district court considered that such a rule necessarily means that a person's blood could 'thereafter be tested without a warrant for any purpose at any time, such as future drug testing or DNA comparisons.' Although such circumstances are not before us, we note that Schmerber dictates that a standard of reasonableness controls and that an unnecessary invasion of privacy interests would most certainly raise concerns of reasonableness. See Schmerber, 384 U.S. at 768, 86 S. Ct. at 1834;  We conclude that in this case the test for controlled substances does not raise concerns of reasonableness.

Because we conclude that the chemical analysis of a lawfully obtained blood sample is not a distinct Fourth Amendment event requiring a warrant, we need not consider whether the search warrant in this case was sufficiently particular or whether exigent circumstances justified a warrantless chemical analysis of Fawcett's blood. If the state lawfully obtains a blood sample for the purpose of chemical analysis, then a chemical analysis of the sample that does not offend standards of reasonableness is not a separate search requiring a warrant."

So even though there was no probable cause to search the Defendant's blood for drugs, the Court of Appeals in today's ruling, finds that probable cause to search for one drug equals probable cause to search for all drugs. 

Sigh.