State v. Weakland
State v. Weakland
Opinion of the Court
¶ 1 Courtney Weakland appeals from her convictions for aggravated driving under the influence (DUI) while impaired to the slightest degree and aggravated driving with a blood alcohol concentration of .08 or more. She contends the trial court should have suppressed the results of blood-alcohol testing because police officers obtained her blood sample without a warrant and without valid consent. Although we agree the sample was unlawfully obtained, we conclude the officers acted in good faith, and exclusion of the evidence therefore was not required.
Factual and Procedural Background
¶ 2 "In reviewing the denial of a defendant's motion to suppress, we consider only 'evidence presented at the suppression hearing and view the facts in the light most favorable to sustaining the trial court's ruling.' " State v. Valenzuela ,
¶ 3 Weakland was indicted on one count of aggravated DUI while impaired to the slightest degree and one count of aggravated DUI with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08 or more. Before trial, she moved to suppress all of the evidence acquired through the warrantless search and seizure of her blood, arguing the requirement language in the admin per se admonition coerced her consent. The court summarily denied her motion.
¶ 4 Following conviction on both counts, the trial court sentenced Weakland to concurrent four-month prison terms followed by concurrent five-year probationary terms. She timely appealed, and we have jurisdiction pursuant to A.R.S. §§ 13-4031 and 13-4033.
Discussion
¶ 5 On appeal, Weakland argues the blood test results should have been suppressed "because the police obtained her blood sample without a warrant and without valid consent." And she maintains the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule, recognized by our supreme court in Valenzuela II ,
¶ 6 The state implicitly concedes that Weakland's consent for the warrantless blood draw was involuntary, and therefore invalid, pursuant to Valenzuela II ,
¶ 7 "The exclusionary rule, which allows suppression of evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, is a prudential doctrine invoked to deter future violations." Id. ¶ 31. Because it functions solely for that purpose, it is unwarranted if it "fails to yield 'appreciable deterrence.' " Davis v. United States ,
¶ 8 "Therefore, when law enforcement officers 'act with an objectively reasonable good-faith belief that their conduct is lawful,' deterrence is unnecessary and the exclusionary rule does not apply." Valenzuela II ,
¶ 9 Weakland argues first that the state failed to raise the good-faith exception in the trial court, and has therefore waived any argument that it should apply. But "[w]e are required to affirm a trial court's ruling if legally correct for any reason and, in doing so, we may address the state's arguments to uphold the court's ruling even if those arguments otherwise could be deemed waived by the state's failure to argue them below."
¶ 10 Weakland next contends the good-faith exception should not apply because "the state continued to disregard Arizona case law that established the admin per se warning misstates the law." Citing Carrillo v. Houser ,
¶ 11 In Valenzuela II , however, our supreme court determined that the good-faith exception applied in circumstances nearly *449identical to those before us here. The court determined that, as in this case, a DUI suspect's consent to a warrantless blood draw had been coerced by the officer's reading of the admin per se admonition. Valenzuela II ,
¶ 12 In her reply brief, however, Weakland also asserts that our supreme court's decision in State v. Butler ,
¶ 13 In Butler , our supreme court addressed "whether the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that a juvenile arrestee's consent be voluntary to allow a warrantless blood draw." Id. ¶ 1. In that case, sixteen-year-old Tyler drove his car to school after smoking marijuana. Id. ¶¶ 2-3. The investigating officer read him the implied consent admonition, and he agreed to a blood draw, which he later challenged on the ground that his consent had been involuntary and that he lacked legal capacity to consent. Id. ¶¶ 4-5. The court acknowledged that, pursuant to the Supreme Court decision in Missouri v. McNeely ,
¶ 14 The court then concluded Tyler's consent had not been voluntary based on the totality of the circumstances, including his age, his demeanor, his having been placed in handcuffs, the length of his detention, and the absence of his parents. Id. ¶¶ 20-21. The court also noted that a deputy had "read the implied consent admonition to Tyler, once verbatim and once in what the deputy termed 'plain English,' concluding with the statement, 'You are, therefore, required to submit to the specified tests.' " Id. ¶ 20. The court did not address whether the language of the admonition was coercive, did not separately or clearly address its effect, and did not expressly raise a question as to its validity. Rather, it discussed the voluntariness of Tyler's consent under the totality of the circumstances-which, as set forth above, included numerous coercive factors-and, on that basis, it concluded Tyler's consent had been involuntary. Id. ¶¶ 18, 20-21.
¶ 15 Indeed, in Valenzuela II , the court limited its reliance on Butler to the propositions that a blood draw is a Fourth Amendment search and that it had in the past "focused on the totality of the circumstances, including but not limited to an officer's reading of an admin per se form, in determining whether a DUI suspect's consent to search was freely and voluntarily given." Valenzuela II ,
¶ 16 Thus, in determining whether the good-faith exception applied, the court in Valenzuela II stated that Arizona courts had not "questioned or overruled" existing law relating to the admin per se admonition, but had instead "continued to approve" it. Id. ¶ 34. We therefore conclude we must follow our supreme court's guidance and apply the good-faith exception in this case. As our supreme court determined in Valenzuela II , binding precedent supported the conclusion that consent given pursuant to the admin per se statute was voluntary and had not been overturned.
¶ 17 Accordingly, the circumstances here differ from those in Havatone , in which our supreme court concluded the state "should have known that routinely directing blood draws from DUI suspects who were sent out of state for emergency treatment, without making a case-specific determination whether a warrant could be timely secured, was either impermissible or at least constitutionally suspect."
¶ 18 Although courts have declined to extend the good-faith exception to cases "in which the appellate precedent, rather than being binding, is (at best) unclear," the exception applies when " 'binding appellate precedent' expressly instructed the officer what to do." United States v. Lara ,
¶ 19 The law does not require law enforcement to make legal assessments our courts have not made. At the time of Weakland's arrest, the courts of this state had not concluded the admin per se admonition was coercive, ineffective, or otherwise negated consent after Butler . See Valenzuela I ,
*451State v. Figueroa , No. 2 CA-CR 2012-0458,
¶ 20 Our dissenting colleague argues we cite only decisions that follow Valenzuela I "under principles of stare decisis." And he contends " Butler could be correctly cited for the proposition that the implied consent admonition was not sufficient alone to facilitate voluntary consent." He further maintains we have not "articulate[d] comprehensively the weight of that jurisprudence," asserting that only the decisions in Valenzuela I and II "squarely addressed whether the language of the implied consent admonition was compatible with constitutionally valid consent." Based on those two decisions, he argues only a minority of jurists accepted the state's position that, after Butler but before Valenzuela II , the implied consent admonition was sufficient to secure consent.
¶ 21 Even were we to accept our dissenting colleague's calculations as to the number of jurists who accepted the ongoing validity of the implied consent admonition after Butler , we would still be in a position of requiring law enforcement agencies to foresee a position that at least some jurists did not themselves adopt. Furthermore, we are aware of no authority to support the implicit suggestions that a case decided by a less than unanimous court carries less authority or that the number of jurists concurring in controlling decisions is relevant to good faith analysis.
¶ 22 In any event, his analysis of the post- Butler cases is incorrect. The court in Okken did, as our colleague describes, address whether the implied consent statutory scheme rendered consent involuntary and did not, as did Valenzuela II , directly address the admonition. But the court discussed Butler , stated that the statute required "actual consent before a warrantless search may be performed," discussed whether the statutory scheme was coercive, and yet made no mention of problems with the admonition-noting only that in Butler , "other factors," including "the defendant's age, his mental state, and the duration and circumstances of his detention," had rendered his consent involuntary. Okken ,
¶ 23 Furthermore, in Pena , our dissenting colleague and another member of this panel rejected a claim that a "warrantless breath test should have been suppressed under ... the Fourth Amendment."
¶ 24 Thus, it was not until our supreme court set forth in Valenzuela II the proper procedures for giving the admin per se admonition that law enforcement had a clear directive that officers could not continue to use the admonition to imply they had authority to compel a warrantless blood draw. We will not hold law enforcement to a standard that requires them to have foreseen that change. See Mitchell ,
Disposition
¶ 25 Weakland's convictions and sentences are affirmed.
The supreme court decided Valenzuela II in April 2016. The state filed its answer to Weakland's motion to suppress in March 2016. Weakland's trial also took place in March. She was sentenced in April, four days before Valenzuela II was issued. Unlike the situation in Brown v. McClennen ,
Rule 111, Ariz. R. Sup. Ct., bars citation of memorandum decisions of our state courts as precedent and allows citation for persuasive value in only limited circumstances. We cite our memorandum decisions in this instance solely to demonstrate that before Valenzuela II , members of the Arizona judiciary did not understand Butler in the way our dissenting colleague argues law enforcement was required to understand it.
After Pena was issued, the United States Supreme Court concluded "the Fourth Amendment permits warrantless breath tests incident to arrests for drunk driving." Birchfield v. North Dakota , ---U.S. ----,
Miranda v. Arizona ,
Dissenting Opinion
¶ 26 In Valenzuela II , our supreme court addressed whether law enforcement agencies could have believed in good faith that a suspect's acquiescence to the "implied consent" admonition was sufficient to secure consent-valid under Fourth Amendment standards-for a warrantless blood draw.
¶ 27 Here, we address the same question with reference to markedly different binding precedent: Ms. Weakland was arrested in 2015, several years after the time of Mr. Valenzuela's arrest. Id. ¶ 4 (Valenzuela arrested in August 2012). Between those arrests, our supreme court issued its opinion in Butler ,
¶ 28 Because Butler thus announced a marked departure from our state's prior precedent addressing the procedure for a constitutionally valid warrantless blood draw, I cannot agree with my colleagues that Valenzuela II resolves the application of the good-faith exception here. Instead, we address a novel question in this case that Valenzuela II did not entertain: whether, after Butler , law enforcement agencies could have continued to believe in good faith that acquiescence to the implied consent admonition was sufficient to demonstrate voluntary consent under Fourth Amendment standards.
¶ 29 In so doing, we must be mindful of the correct legal standards in applying the good-faith exception. The state bears the burden of establishing that it violated the defendant's constitutional rights in good faith. Havatone ,
¶ 30 We must therefore confront what Butler held. There, the state argued "that every Arizona motorist gives 'implied consent' under § 28-1321 and the tests administered under the statute are [therefore] not subject to a Fourth Amendment voluntariness analysis." Butler ,
¶ 31 Our highest court bluntly characterized these arguments as "unconvincing" and clarified how it would view the application of the Fourth Amendment to DUI blood draws in future cases: "We hold now that, independent of § 28-1321, the Fourth Amendment requires an arrestee's consent to be voluntary to justify a warrantless blood draw." Id. ¶ 18 (emphasis added).
¶ 32 As the court's own language in that holding suggests, this upended prior understandings of blood draw procedure in Arizona DUI cases. Previous cases had expressly or implicitly accepted that the implied consent process itself satisfied all Fourth Amendment concerns. See Valenzuela II ,
¶ 33 In so reversing, the supreme court expressly held that an officer's compliance with Arizona's implied consent law was not sufficient alone to establish constitutionally valid consent to a blood draw: "Contrary to the State's argument, a compelled blood draw, even when administered pursuant to § 28-1321, is a search subject to the Fourth Amendment's constraints." Butler ,
¶ 34 As the state's arguments in Butler demonstrate, Arizona law enforcement agencies had persistently relied on the DUI suspect's acquiescence to the § 28-1321 advisory (the "implied consent admonition")
¶ 35 After the supreme court's holding in Butler , any agency seeking to comply with evolving constitutional standards should have logically evaluated whether an advisory designed for one purpose (securing compliance with Arizona implied consent law) would coincidentally fulfill another (demonstrating voluntary consent to a search). For the reasons that follow, that inquiry would not have been reassuring.
*454¶ 36 First, in Butler , the supreme court's reasoning plainly demonstrated that submission to the admonition would not alone suffice to demonstrate voluntary consent.
¶ 37 Arguably, the court's reasoning went further than that. In a paragraph devoted to itemizing the reasons that "sufficient evidence supports the juvenile court's finding that [the juvenile] did not voluntarily consent to the blood draw," the court apparently listed the officer's reading of the implied consent admonition as a factor showing involuntariness . Id. In so doing, it chose to quote the sentence of the admonition most incompatible with the notion that its hearer could lawfully refuse consent: "You are, therefore, required to submit to the specified tests." Id. I would submit that the implication of this paragraph-in the context of an express holding that plainly stated the implied consent law no longer sufficed to establish consent-should have caused law enforcement agencies some pause.
¶ 38 At minimum, the supreme court's reasoning in Butler foreshadowed its ultimate holding in Valenzuela II : that the implied consent admonition, far from establishing voluntary consent, actually constituted an assertion of lawful authority that "effectively proclaimed that Valenzuela had no right to resist the search." Valenzuela II ,
¶ 39 Yet, the instant case demonstrates the Oro Valley Police Department persisted in using a procedure that relied exclusively on such acquiescence to secure consent to conduct blood draws. If it did so because it neglected to stay abreast of evolving case law, that failure would constitute "systemic negligence." See Havatone ,
¶ 40 On the other hand, any state agency that was alert to evolving precedent-and that sought to conform its search procedures to the holding in Butler -would review the content of the implied consent admonition and evaluate its suitability to establish voluntary consent. Such an inquiry could not avoid considering whether the language of the admonition was logically or semantically compatible with securing voluntary consent from a suspect.
¶ 41 Nor could any agency earnestly assess the constitutionality of its blood draw search procedure without considering Bumper ,
¶ 42 For the above reasons, a serious review of police practice after Butler should have generated doubts about the voluntariness of any acquiescence to the implied consent admonition. If those doubts did not arise *455from the semantic disharmony between the words "require" and "submit" when compared to the words "voluntary" and "consent," they should have arisen upon reading longstanding, and clearly pertinent, jurisprudence from the United States Supreme Court.
¶ 43 The majority maintains, however, that "the law does not require law enforcement to make legal assessments our courts have not made." And, it asserts that "at the time of Weakland's arrest, the courts of this state had not concluded the admin per se admonition was coercive or otherwise negated consent after Butler ." It supports that conclusion by citing jurisprudence from an inferior Arizona court, issued after the time of Weakland's arrest, which found acquiescence to the admonition an act of voluntary consent. See supra ¶19 (citing Valenzuela I and Arizona Court of Appeals cases following it under principles of stare decisis).
¶ 44 In essence, the majority asks: If some reasonable appellate judges could later find no constitutional infirmity with the admonition after Butler , how could we hold the state to any higher standard? But this intuitively appealing argument overlooks the express holding of Butler , provides an incomplete assessment of the subsequent case law, and implicitly assesses good faith under an incorrect standard.
¶ 45 To be sure, police agencies need not make legal assessments our courts have not made. See Kjolsrud ,
¶ 46 The majority is correct that the Butler opinion did not expressly hold that the admonition was affirmatively coercive. But Butler could be correctly cited for the proposition that the implied consent admonition was not sufficient alone to facilitate voluntary consent.
¶ 47 To the extent the majority suggests that case law post-dating Weakland's arrest should inform our assessment of the state's good faith in drawing Weakland's blood, it fails to articulate comprehensively the weight of that jurisprudence. Subsequent to the holding in Butler , only two courts published opinions, unconstrained by stare decisis, that squarely addressed whether the language of the implied consent admonition was compatible with constitutionally valid consent: this division of the Arizona Court of Appeals (in Valenzuela I ) and the Arizona Supreme Court (in Valenzuela II ). This court agreed with the state, in a divided decision, and held that it was compatible. The Arizona Supreme Court held unanimously that it was not.
¶ 48 In all, five justices and one judge who addressed the issue held that the implied consent affidavit was incompatible with securing voluntary consent. Only two judges held otherwise. That blunt head count-that most jurists ultimately rejected the state's theory-does little to assist the state's current contention that it could have previously proceeded without harboring doubts about the constitutionality of its practice.
¶ 49 The majority emphasizes two court of appeals decisions that did not address the question of whether the language of the admonition was compatible with voluntary consent. Compare Okken ,
¶ 50 Properly understood in the context of a good-faith analysis, the pertinent history of Arizona jurisprudence can be summarized as follows. In Butler , the Arizona Supreme Court clearly drew the constitutionality of the state's practice here into question-even if it did not expressly hold it coercive. After Butler , the state's use of the admonition persisted in the face of, at best, unsettled law.
¶ 51 At that time, a careful review of the admonition's language, together with an appraisal of the pertinent longstanding jurisprudence, Bumper , should have raised substantial doubts about the constitutionality of the practice. In subsequent jurisprudence, most Arizona jurists tasked with squarely addressing the question in the first instance-and all five justices of our highest court-rejected the state's claim that acquiescence to the admonition demonstrated voluntary consent. Valenzuela II ,
¶ 52 None of this jurisprudential history gives comfort to the state's claim that it could, after Butler , assume it was securing blood draws in conformity with constitutional standards. Rather, by persisting in the use of the admonition as the sole basis for consent, it disregarded a plain risk that the practice would not pass constitutional muster.
¶ 53 In this legal context, we are provided two potential standards for assessing the good-faith exception. Davis instructs that when the prevailing law at the time of the state's unconstitutional practice had "specifically authorize[d]" the practice, the good-faith exception applies unless the police officers exhibit "deliberate, reckless, or grossly negligent disregard for Fourth Amendment rights."
¶ 54 After Butler , the law was unsettled. Nonetheless, the state persisted in its prior practice. In so doing, it disregarded a substantial risk that its practice violated a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights. To apply the good-faith exception under such circumstances would only encourage law enforcement to continue with dubious practices until a court finds them expressly unconstitutional. See
¶ 55 When we exclude or suppress evidence in a criminal case, the social costs of doing so are distressingly concrete. An individual defendant, and perhaps others similarly situated, may escape responsibility for crimes they have committed. Davis ,
In Butler , the supreme court aptly refers to the advisory, alternatively called the "admin per se" admonition, see Valenzuela II ,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- The STATE of Arizona v. Courtney Noelle WEAKLAND
- Cited By
- 2 cases
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- Published