On December 16, 2015, the Los Angeles Times published an editorial entitled “Sobriety tests and the Constitution.” The article can be found here:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-1216-drunk-driving-20151216-story.html
The editorial was partly in response to the United States Supreme Court’s decision to decide whether people can be criminally punished for refusing a post-DUI arrest chemical test absent a warrant.
The author’s stance is clear when they say, “It seems clear that it’s wrong to criminalize the refusal to submit to a test for which police haven’t obtained a warrant. Not only do such laws punish suspects for asserting their rights under the 4th Amendment; they also effectively provide an end run around the court’s 2013 decision [to require law enforcement to obtain a warrant prior to a forcible blood withdrawal].”
I wholeheartedly agree.
On December 18, 2015, the Los Angeles Times published responses to the December 16th editorial in a section entitled “Readers React – The risk of giving more rights to drunk driving suspects.” The responses can be found here:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-1218-friday-dui-checkpoints-20151218-story.html
In the first of two responses, a retired deputy district attorney for Santa Barbara County wrote, “Let drunk-driving suspects refuse a mandatory biological sample (such as the option of breath or blood in California) without consequences, and watch alcohol-related roadway deaths spiral upward. Why? Without the objective and usually conclusive evidence of a breath or blood sample available for trial, prosecutors will be left with largely subjective evidence. That enables defense attorneys to endlessly second-guess officers’ observations. This will leave legions of drivers undeterred by the perceived legal consequences of alcohol-impaired driving.”
Another response, in part, says, “Your defense of individual rights as they relate to prosecuting suspected drunk drivers goes too far. Police personnel have to do their job, and a drunk driver endangering people’s lives on a road needs to be punished, end of story.”
Plain and simple, the 4th Amendment was included in the Bill of Rights to protect the people from unreasonable and warrantless governmental searches and seizures of places and things where there existed a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Nowhere do we have a higher expectation of privacy than with our bodies. Consequently, nowhere does the 4th Amendment become as important as it does when it comes to searches of our bodies.
Just as the 5th Amendment requires that people cannot be punished for asserting their right to remain silent, so too can they not be punished for asserting their right against a search of their body without a warrant.
Requiring law enforcement to obtain a warrant prior to subjecting a person to a chemical test, which is a search for 4th Amendment purposes, will not leave prosecutors without “objective and usually conclusive evidence of a breath or blood sample” nor will “prosecutor be left with largely subjective evidence,” as the first response asserts. All it is doing is requiring that law enforcement play by the rules before getting what they want. Play by the rules (i.e. the Constitution), and get the evidence needed to legally prosecute drunk drivers. Stop looking for shortcuts and prosecute drunk drivers within the parameters of the Constitution.
Yes, police personnel “have to do their jobs,” but, again, they must do it lawfully. And the law requires that they obtain a warrant before searching.
I agree with the notion that “A drunk driver endangering people’s lives on a road needs to be punished.” But this statement has nothing to do with refusing a warrantless chemical test. A person cannot be punished before they are found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of drunk driving. At the time a person submits to a chemical test, they have not been found guilty of anything.
Furthermore, they most certainly cannot be punished for doing something that the Constitution of the United States absolutely gives them a right to do.
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