Supreme Court DUI Blood Test Ruling: Police Must Try To Obtain Search Warrant

[Purplehazed]

19. Implied consent......

gets tangled up with the fourth amendment, unreasonable search and seizure.
There are two components related to DUI, the administrative side side (the state licensing authority) where your rights are limited and then the criminal court where you are supposed to have all the rights we typically expect.

It amounts to a law that requires one to give evidence against oneself or suffer a penalty. It may play out just fine when you're talking about an administrative license suspension but it is different when you are being charged with a crime. From my reading, judges have typically allowed a lowered standard of evidence collection in cases related to DUI.

I think that some states require submitting to field sobriety tests or lose their license. There is no such thing as passing the field sobriety test, only levels of failure/impairment. Even when they are conducted exactly as proscribed, no oncoming headlights, level ground, correct weight of the tested, clearly laid out line on the ground etc, they are only 75% effective at predicting impairment. That is a problem when it comes to being charged with a crime. How effective is the test when an officer has not been deemed proficient or he he makes a suspect walk an imaginary line? How are the accused rights protected when a judge allows substandard evidence to be used for a conviction.

Please don't flame me. I'm not advocating impaired driving. I've been through this. Ultimately my record was cleared, but it cost me dearly.