Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2019

Mitchell v. Wisconsin

588 U.S. 840 | 139 S. Ct. 2525 | 204 L. Ed. 2d 1040

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Takeaway

In short, this case creates a strong but rebuttable exigency presumption: police may almost always order a warrantless blood draw when a suspected drunk driver is unconscious and cannot reasonably take an evidentiary breath test.

Background

After police received a report that Gerald Mitchell had driven while visibly intoxicated, an officer found him stumbling, slurring his speech, and unable to stand without assistance. A roadside preliminary breath test registered a 0.24% blood-alcohol concentration (BAC), roughly three times Wisconsin’s legal limit. The officer arrested Mitchell and drove him to the station for an evidentiary breath test, but Mitchell became too lethargic to complete one.

The officer instead took Mitchell to a hospital. Mitchell lost consciousness during the trip. At the hospital, the officer read the statutory implied-consent warning to Mitchell, received no response, and directed hospital staff to draw his blood without obtaining a warrant. The sample, taken about 90 minutes after arrest, showed a BAC of 0.222%.

Mitchell moved to suppress the blood-test results under the Fourth Amendment. Wisconsin defended the draw solely under its implied-consent statute and expressly disclaimed reliance on exigent circumstances. The trial court denied suppression, and a jury convicted Mitchell. The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the statute permitted the warrantless draw from an unconscious driver. The Supreme Court vacated and remanded.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Wisconsin’s implied-consent statute itself supplied actual consent that justified drawing blood from an unconscious motorist without a warrant.

Holding

The plurality did not decide that Wisconsin’s statute created actual Fourth Amendment consent; instead, it resolved the case under the exigent-circumstances exception.

Reasoning

The plurality explained that the Court has generally approved implied-consent laws as part of the States’ drunk-driving regulatory systems, particularly where they impose civil penalties and evidentiary consequences for refusing BAC testing. But prior cases did not treat those laws as creating actual consent to every search the statutes authorize.

Because a blood draw is a Fourth Amendment search, the plurality assessed its reasonableness under the established exceptions to the warrant requirement rather than holding that Mitchell’s decision to drive amounted to voluntary consent.

Issue #2

Whether exigent circumstances generally permit a warrantless blood draw from an unconscious drunk-driving suspect when police lack a reasonable opportunity to administer an evidentiary breath test.

Holding

Yes. When police have probable cause to believe a motorist drove under the influence and the motorist’s unconsciousness or stupor requires transport to a hospital or similar facility before an evidentiary breath test can reasonably be given, exigent circumstances almost always permit a warrantless BAC blood test.

Reasoning

The plurality began with the importance of the governmental interests involved. States have a compelling interest in highway safety, enforceable BAC limits are central to drunk-driving laws, and accurate BAC evidence is necessary to enforce those limits. Because alcohol dissipates naturally from the bloodstream, delay reduces the evidentiary value of testing.

Under Missouri v. McNeely, alcohol dissipation alone does not create a categorical exigency in every drunk-driving case. But Schmerber v. California permits a warrantless blood draw when dissipation combines with other pressing circumstances that leave no time to secure a warrant.

An unconscious driver presents those additional circumstances. Unconsciousness is itself a medical emergency that commonly requires transport, monitoring, and urgent treatment. Officers may also have to address crashes, injured persons, traffic hazards, and scene investigation. Those competing responsibilities can delay a warrant application while BAC evidence continues to disappear.

The plurality rejected the claim that modern electronic-warrant procedures eliminate the problem. Even expedited warrants require preparation, review, and an available magistrate; in an emergency, diverting an officer even briefly from urgent medical or safety duties may carry substantial costs.

The Court emphasized that its rule is a general presumption for the class of unconscious-driver cases, not a holding that the particular facts of Mitchell’s case conclusively established exigency. A defendant may rebut the presumption in an unusual case by showing both that the blood would not have been drawn absent police interest in BAC evidence and that police could not reasonably have concluded that seeking a warrant would interfere with other pressing duties. Because Mitchell had no opportunity to make that showing, the Court vacated and remanded.

Issue #3

Whether the Court could resolve the case on exigent circumstances even though Wisconsin had disclaimed a case-specific exigency argument below.

Holding

Yes. The plurality concluded that it could announce a rule governing the broader category of unconscious-driver cases because that issue was encompassed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s framing of the Fourth Amendment question and was addressed in the parties’ submissions.

Reasoning

The plurality distinguished its rule from a finding that exigent circumstances existed on the particular facts of Mitchell’s arrest. It treated the question as one about the recurring circumstances surrounding unconscious drunk-driving suspects, rather than about a fact-bound claim that Wisconsin had preserved below.

The plurality also reasoned that Fourth Amendment exigency cases often provide general guidance for recurring situations, such as emergency aid, fires, and hot pursuit. In its view, the totality-of-the-circstances approach did not prevent the Court from identifying circumstances that ordinarily establish exigency in this recurring setting.

Concurrences

Justice Thomas

Reasoning

Justice Thomas concurred only in the judgment because he regarded the plurality’s presumption as needlessly difficult to administer. In his view, courts and officers must now determine when unconsciousness creates an exception and when an unusual case rebuts it, even though the outcome will usually favor the State.

He would instead adopt the per se rule he proposed in his Missouri v. McNeely dissent: once police have probable cause to believe that a person drove drunk, the natural metabolization of alcohol creates an exigency permitting a warrantless blood draw. That rule would apply whether the driver is conscious or unconscious.

Justice Thomas argued that the ongoing destruction of BAC evidence is itself sufficient to establish exigency. He maintained that McNeely was wrongly decided and that Birchfield undermined McNeely’s distinction between evidence actively destroyed by a suspect and evidence lost through a natural process.

Dissents

Justice Sotomayor

Reasoning

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, argued that the Fourth Amendment requires police to obtain a warrant for a blood draw whenever they reasonably can. Wisconsin had expressly conceded in the state courts that no exigency justified Mitchell’s draw, so she maintained that the Court should have decided only the implied-consent question presented.

She stressed that drawing blood is a serious bodily intrusion and produces a sample that may reveal information far beyond BAC. Schmerber, McNeely, and Birchfield establish that blood draws ordinarily require warrants, and McNeely specifically rejected a categorical exigency rule based solely on alcohol’s natural dissipation.

In her view, unconsciousness does not materially alter the McNeely analysis. An unconscious driver must be transported and treated, but that process can create time for an officer or another officer to seek a warrant. BAC declines gradually and predictably, electronic warrants are often available quickly, and experts can sometimes extrapolate backward from a later BAC reading.

Justice Sotomayor faulted the plurality for replacing McNeely’s case-by-case inquiry with an unsupported presumption that exigency exists in nearly every unconscious-driver case. The dramatic crash and emergency scenarios invoked by the plurality were not present in Mitchell’s case and cannot justify dispensing with the warrant requirement in the broad run of cases.

She also objected to the Court’s decision to reach an issue Wisconsin had affirmatively waived. Deciding an unbriefed theory deprived the parties of a fair opportunity to develop evidence and arguments, departed from the adversarial process, and allowed the Court to construct a constitutional rule without a lower-court decision on the issue.

Justice Gorsuch

Reasoning

Justice Gorsuch would have dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. The Court took the case to determine whether Wisconsin’s implied-consent statute provided an exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, but the plurality declined to answer that question.

Although he acknowledged that the Court may affirm on any ground supported by the record, Justice Gorsuch believed that the exigent-circumstances issue raised difficult questions that the parties and lower courts had not litigated. He would have waited for a case that squarely presented that issue rather than deciding it on the Court’s own initiative.