State v. Adkins __ NJ __ (A-91-13)
Decided
May 4, 2015
LaVECCHIA, J., writing for a
unanimous Court.
In this appeal,
the Court considers the application of the United States Supreme Court’s
decision in Missouri v. McNeely, ___ U.S. ___, 133 S. Ct. 1552,
185 L. Ed. 2d 696 (2013), to a case involving a blood draw, for purposes
of determining blood alcohol content (BAC), that took place before the McNeely
decision was issued.
In the early
morning hours of December 16, 2010, defendant, Timothy Adkins, was involved in
a single-car accident that resulted in injuries to his two passengers. Based on
his performance on a series of field sobriety tests conducted at the scene of
the accident, defendant was arrested on suspicion of Driving While Intoxicated
(DWI) at approximately 2:27 a.m. Defendant was transported to the West Deptford
Police Department and was advised of his Miranda rights; he invoked his
right to counsel. Although Alcotest equipment was present, no breathalyzer test
was administered at headquarters. Police conveyed defendant to the hospital,
and the police obtained defendant’s BAC test results from a sample, drawn by
hospital personnel at police direction, without the police first having secured
a warrant or defendant’s prior written consent. Defendant was issued summonses
for DWI, careless driving, and possession of an open container in a motor
vehicle. Subsequently, a grand jury also charged him with fourth-degree assault
by auto for recklessly operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol
and causing bodily injury.
McNeely, which held that the natural
metabolism of alcohol in an individual’s bloodstream does not constitute a per
se exigency under a Fourth Amendment search and seizure analysis. 133 S. Ct.
at 1568. In light of McNeely, on April 22, 2013, defendant filed a
pre-trial motion to suppress the blood test results. Following a hearing at
which only defendant testified, the court granted defendant’s motion, applying McNeely
and finding that the police did not demonstrate exigent circumstances before
securing a sample of defendant’s blood without a warrant.
The State
appealed, and the Appellate Division reversed. 433 N.J. Super. 479 (App.
Div. 2013). The panel explained that, prior to McNeely, New Jersey
courts, including the Supreme Court, had cited the United States Supreme
Court’s decision in Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966),
as support for the warrantless taking of blood samples from suspected
intoxicated drivers, so long as the search was supported by probable cause and
the sample was obtained in a medically reasonable manner. The panel thus
reasoned that McNeely had worked a dramatic shift in the State’s Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence and created a new rule of criminal procedure. The panel
acknowledged that McNeely ordinarily would be applied retroactively to
all cases pending on direct review, but noted that federal law generally does
not apply the exclusionary rule when police conduct a search in good faith
reliance on previously binding precedent, and concluded that the exclusionary
rule should not be applied here.
The Court granted defendant’s
petition for certification. 217 N.J. 588 (2014).
HELD: McNeely’s
pronouncement on the Fourth Amendment’s
requirements must apply retroactively to cases that were in the pipeline when McNeely
was issued. Accordingly, the Appellate Division’s judgment is reversed. The
matter is remanded to allow the State and defendant the opportunity to
re-present their respective positions on exigency in a hearing on defendant’s
motion to suppress the admissibility of the blood test results. In that hearing,
potential dissipation of the evidence may be given substantial weight as a
factor to be considered in the totality of the circumstances. The reviewing
court must focus on the objective exigency of the circumstances faced by the
officers.
1. In the context of the
exigent-circumstances exception, the United States Supreme Court addressed the
constitutionality of a warrantless blood draw from a suspected drunk driver in
its 1966 decision in Schmerber, 384 U.S. 757. In finding the
warrantless blood draw constitutionally permissible, the Court concluded that
although a warrant is typically required for the taking of blood, the officer
might have reasonably believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in
which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant threatened the destruction of
evidence. The Court further added that defendant’s blood was drawn by a
reasonable method and in a reasonable manner. Id. at 770-71.
2. Following Schmerber,
courts were not in agreement on whether the decision created a rule that the
dissipation of alcohol constituted a per se exigency justifying a warrantless
search. To resolve the split in authority, the Supreme Court granted certiorari
in McNeely, where the State of Missouri argued that “the fact that
alcohol is naturally metabolized by the human body creates an exigent
circumstance in every case.” 133 S. Ct. at 1567. The Supreme Court
explained that Schmerber never created a per se rule but, instead, had
incorporated a totality-of-the-circumstances test. Id. at 1558-60. Thus,
in McNeely, the Court clarified that the dissipation of alcohol from a
person’s bloodstream is not the beginning and end of the analysis for exigency
in all warrantless blood draws involving suspected drunk drivers. Rather,
courts must evaluate the totality of the circumstances in assessing exigency,
one factor of which is the human body’s natural dissipation of alcohol.
3. The question before the
Court is McNeely’s application to the warrantless drawing of defendant’s
blood, which occurred prior to McNeely’s issuance. In State v.
Wessells, 209 N.J. 395 (2012), the Court noted that “federal
retroactivity turns on whether a new rule of law has been announced, coupled
with an analysis of the status of the particular matter, that is, whether it is
not yet final, is pending on direct appeal, or is being collaterally reviewed.”
Id. at 411. The Court recognized that if a new rule has been established
“for the conduct of criminal prosecutions” it will “be applied retroactively to
all cases, state or federal, pending on direct review or not yet final, with no
exception for cases in which the new rule constitutes a ‘clear break’ with the
past.” Id. at 412 (quoting Griffith v. Kentucky, 479 U.S.
314, 328 (1987)). Accordingly, in Wessells, the Court applied a new rule
of law that had been established in a United States Supreme Court decision to a
case pending review in New Jersey at the time the decision was handed down. As
the Appellate Division found, and defendant and the State acknowledge, this case
calls for a similar result. McNeely represents new law settling an area
of criminal practice, thus, under federal retroactivity law, the decision
deserves pipeline retroactive application. The United States Supreme Court has
pronounced the standard to be applied under the Fourth Amendment
to warrantless searches involving blood draws of suspected DWI drivers and,
under Supremacy Clause principles, this Court is bound to follow it as the
minimal amount of constitutional protection to be provided. Therefore, in
accord with Wessells, McNeely applies retroactively to cases that
were in the pipeline when it was decided.
4. The Court next considers
whether the exclusionary rule should have any applicability in suppressing
defendant’s blood test results when the police merely followed an asserted,
commonly held understanding of Schmerber’s requirements in this State.
Our State declined to recognize the exception to the exclusionary rule that was
first established in United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984),
and has consistently rejected a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.
This matter deals specifically with police conduct in reliance on case law in
New Jersey that led law enforcement to the reasonable conclusion that the
natural dissipation of alcohol from the human body created exigency sufficient
to dispense with the need to seek a warrant. Although the Court’s decisions
never expressly pronounced an understanding of Schmerber that per se
permitted warrantless blood draws in all cases on the basis of alcohol
dissipation alone, case law contains language that provides a basis for such a
belief. The United States Supreme Court has now clarified the appropriate test
to be applied to warrantless blood draws, and this Court adheres to that test
without any superimposed exception.
5. In these pipeline cases,
law enforcement should be permitted on remand to present their basis for
believing that exigency was present in the facts surrounding the evidence’s
potential dissipation and police response under the circumstances to the events
involved in the arrest. The exigency in these circumstances should be assessed
in a manner that permits the court to ascribe substantial weight to the
perceived dissipation that an officer reasonably faced. Reasonableness of
officers must be assessed in light of the existence of the McNeely
opinion. But, in reexamining pipeline cases when police may have believed that
they did not have to evaluate whether a warrant could be obtained, based on
prior guidance from the Court that did not dwell on such an obligation,
reviewing courts should focus on the objective exigency of the circumstances
that the officer faced in the situation.
The judgment of the Appellate
Division is REVERSED and the matter is REMANDED to the trial
court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
CHIEF JUSTICE
RABNER; JUSTICES ALBIN, PATTERSON, FERNANDEZ-VINA and SOLOMON; and JUDGE CUFF
(temporarily assigned) join in JUSTICE LaVECCHIA’s opinion.
