Court Finds McNeely Exigent Circumstances to Uphold Warrantless Blood Draw

State v. Stavish, Minn.S.Ct., 8/19/2015.  Justice Dietzen, over dissents from Chief Justice Gildea and Justice Page, takes up the question of just what constitutes an "exigency" that gets around the requirement of McNeeley that officers get a warrant before drawing blood to test for intoxication.  The Court of Appeals had determined that such an exigency existed - read about that here - and for slightly different reasons Justice Dietzen agrees.

The relevant circumstances are that law enforcement had reason to believe that Stavish, who allegedly admitted to being the driver, had consumed alcohol, and that alcohol contributed to the accident. Thus, it was important to draw Stavish’s blood within 2 hours of the accident to ensure the reliability and admissibility of the alcohol concentration evidence. See Minn Stat. § 169A.20, subd. 1(5) (defining impairment as an alcohol concentration of 0.08 or greater, as measured within 2 hours of the time of driving). Additionally, Stavish sustained serious injuries that necessitated emergency medical treatment at a hospital and potentially required that he be transported by helicopter to another hospital. Stavish’s medical condition and need for treatment rendered his future availability for a blood draw uncertain. Sergeant Martens did not know how long Stavish was likely to remain at the same hospital or whether further medical care would preclude obtaining a sample even if Stavish stayed at the same hospital

The dissenters didn't think that the state had established such an exigency, with Justice Page the most vociferous about that:

In this case, the court continues its efforts, begun in State v. Bernard, 859 N.W.2d 762 (Minn. 2015), and reiterated in State v. Lindquist, ___ N.W.2d ___ (Minn. Aug. 19, 2015), to protect its erroneous decision in State v. Shriner, 751 N.W.2d 538 (Minn. 2008) (establishing that the evanescent nature of alcohol in the bloodstream is a single-factor exigency), abrogated by Missouri v. McNeely, ___ U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1552 (2013) (holding that, contrary to this court’s decisions in Shriner, the dissipation of alcohol in the blood does not create a per se exigency), and Shriner’s progeny. In Bernard, we “fundamentally depart[ed] from longstanding Fourth Amendment principles” to justify a warrantless breath test as a valid search incident to arrest—“creating a novel bright-line rule” that “simply readopts a per se exigency under a different name.” 859 N.W.2d at 774, 779 (Minn. 2015) (Page, J., & Stras, J., dissenting jointly). Here, the court doubles down and again “readopts a per se exigency,” id. at 779, this time by refusing to hold the State to its “heavy burden” to rebut the presumption of unreasonableness associated with a warrantless search of the person, Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 749-50 (1984), by establishing that “the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened ‘the destruction of evidence,’ ” Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 770 (1966) (citation omitted). The record upon which the court finds the existence of exigent circumstances is so minimal that the decision here, in effect, nullifies the warrant requirement in every suspected drunk-driving case involving an accident with serious injuries—contradicting basic Fourth Amendment principles and the Supreme Court’s decision in McNeely.