Impaired Driver Arrestee Need Not Be Taken Before a Judge Before Administration of a Breath Test

State v. Shimota, Minn.Ct.App., 2/16/2016.  The DWI/Refusal wars are unrelenting.  Here's how the court set the tone for this latest set of challenges:

Appellant Michelle MacDonald Shimota grabbed her steering wheel, her gear shift knob, and a police officer’s wrist to prevent police from removing her from her car when she refused to be taken into custody on suspicion of drunk driving. After the officers pulled her loose and took her to the police station, Shimota would not submit to a breath test, demanding to be taken before a judge. Shimota challenges her convictions of obstructing legal process and chemical-test refusal, arguing that police violated her statutory right to be taken immediately before a judge after her arrest, that the district court violated her alleged Sixth Amendment right to create a video recording of the trial, that the district court improperly instructed the jury on the crime of test refusal, and that the evidence does not prove obstruction. 

Ms. Shimota said that the police were required to take her "immediately" to a judge, even before administration (or the offer thereof) of a breath test.  This lets the dogs loose for more of the court's favorite activity of late:  law by dictionary.  Just when does "immediately" mean, well "right now, dammit;" and when does it mean "will you give me some room here, I'm getting to it"? Here's how the court commences this inquiry:

 Tracing its literal meaning from its Latin origins, we know that the word means “not” (in or im) “intervening” (mediatus). See 7 Oxford English Dictionary 681 (2d ed. 1989). “Immediate” is therefore a relational word that joins two places, persons, or events with each other without any intervening place, person, or event.

The erudition does not improve thereafter. When all the dust settles, the court emphatically says that "immediately" does not mean that one who is arrested on suspicion of drunk driving gets to see the judge before being invited to blow into the machine.

On trial day, Ms. Shimota arrived with a filming crew and commenced to set up to record the trial.  The rules of practice require unanimous consent of the parties to permit that and the state was having none of it.  Ms. Shimota countered that the Sixth Amendment, in combination with the First Amendment, gave  her the right to record her own trial.  The court of appeals is not persuaded; mostly because the court couldn't find any court that had created this constitutional right to record one's own trial. Unsaid is the absolute chaos that creation of such a constitutional right would create.

Ms. Shimota also complained about the trial court's instruction on the officer's requirement to have had probable cause that she was impaired before he could require her to submit to a breath test.  Essentially, she said that it was impossible for a juror to assess the "objective facts" from the viewpoint of a reasonable officer.  The court dismisses this argument with the rather flippant observation that jurors are required to apply a reasonable person standard all the time, so what's the problem here?