Today the Minnesota Supreme Court issued a decision in State v. Brooks, affecting DWI arrests in Minnesota. At issue in Brooks was whether the police needed a search warrant before obtaining a blood or urine sample from Mr. Brooks who had been arrested for DWI and, if a warrant was required, did Mr. Brooks voluntarily consent to the test (so the police did not need a warrant).
In Mr. Brooks’ case the police read him the Minnesota Implied Consent advisory. The advisory states that once police have probable cause to believe a suspect has been driving while over the legal drinking limit, then the driver must take a chemical test and “refusal to submit to a test is a crime.” Mr. Brooks argued that while he consented to the test, he did so only after the police told him that refusal to submit to the test was a crime, effectively coercing his consent.
The court held that whether a DWI suspect voluntarily consents to a test under the Implied Consent law requires an analysis of the totality of the circumstances and that the police informing a suspect of the consequences of test refusal is not in itself coercion. Under this analysis, the court held that Mr. Brooks consented when he took the blood and urine tests in his multiple DWI cases and thus the police did not need to obtain search warrants.
How this will affect future DWI arrest remains to be seen. It appears from the Supreme Court’s ruling that each situation must be analyzed on a case-by-case basis to determine whether or not, under the totality of the circumstances, the driver was coerced into giving his or her consent.
One thing that is clear from the Brooks decision is that because alcohol dissipates from a driver’s blood does not in and of itself excuse the police from obtaining a search warrant if the driver does not give consent.