Court wary of warrantless blood tests in DUI cases

AP foreign, Wednesday January 9 2013

MARK SHERMAN

Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court appeared reluctant Wednesday to allow police to routinely order blood tests for unwilling drunken-driving suspects without at least trying to obtain a search warrant from a judge.

The court heard arguments Wednesday in a case about a disputed blood test from Missouri, against the backdrop of a serious national problem of more than 10,000 deaths from crashes involving alcohol-impaired drivers in 2010, about one every 51 minutes.

That number has dropped by 60 percent in the past 20 years because of a sustained national crackdown on drunken driving. Lawyers for Missouri and the Obama administration argued that dispensing with a warrant requirement would further that effort because any delay in testing a suspect's blood-alcohol content allows alcohol to dissipate in the blood.

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But justices across the ideological spectrum questioned whether the intrusive procedure of sticking a needle in someone's arm to draw blood should routinely be done without the approval of a judge. At the same time, they made clear that they did not want to unduly delay the collection of blood samples.

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