concluding that “a DWI suspect’s privacy interest outweighs the State’s interest in preventing drunk driving through warrantless searches” and quoting the McNeely plurality in “stating that ‘the general importance of the government’s interest in this area does not justify departing from the warrant requirement without a showing’ that some established exception . . . applies”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that “a DWI suspect’s privacy interest outweighs the State’s interest in preventing drunk driving through warrantless searches” and quoting the McNeely plurality in “stating that ‘the general importance of the government’s interest in this area does not justify departing from the warrant requirement without a showing’ that some established exception . . . applies”
- holding that implied con- give a blood sample. He refused, so blood-draw sent statutes, “taken by themselves, [do technician Adam Tomlinson performed the blood not] form a constitutionally valid alternat- draw without Appellant's consent while Officer ive to the Fourth Amendment warrant re- Martin was present. Tomlinson worked for the quirement”
- explaining that “necessary element of valid consent is the ability to limit or revoke it” and that “[i]t would be wholly inconsistent with these principles to uphold the warrantless search of a suspect’s blood on the basis of consent when a suspect has . . . expressly and unequivocally refused to submit to the search”
- holding that “a nonconsensual search of a DWI suspect’s blood conducted pursuant to the mandatory-blood-draw and implied-consent provisions in the Transportation Code, when undertaken in the absence of a warrant or any applicable exception to the warrant requirement, violates the Fourth Amendment”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
YEARY, J.,
filed a dissenting opinion in which KELLER, F.J., joined.