People of Michigan v. Glorianna Woodard
People of Michigan v. Glorianna Woodard
Opinion
*379 In this interlocutory appeal, defendant, Glorianna Woodard, has been charged with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, third offense, MCL 257.625, and operating a vehicle while her license was suspended or revoked, MCL 257.904. In the trial court, defendant filed a motion to suppress evidence of her blood alcohol content, asserting that the analysis of her blood constituted an illegal search performed after she withdrew her consent for a blood test. The trial court denied this motion and denied defendant's motion for reconsideration. Defendant filed an interlocutory application for leave to appeal, which this Court granted. 1 Because the trial court did not err by denying defendant's motion to suppress, we affirm and remand for further proceedings.
I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
On March 6, 2015, Michigan State Police Trooper Anthony Ramirez conducted a traffic stop of a vehicle *380 driven by defendant. Initially, Ramirez stopped the vehicle because the license plate light was not working and the license plate had a "smoke tinted" cover. However, based on defendant's watery and bloodshot eyes, the *302 smell of alcohol in the vehicle, and defendant's unsteady gait and performance on field sobriety tests, Ramirez believed that defendant was intoxicated. At Ramirez's request, defendant agreed to perform a preliminary breath test. Ramirez then arrested defendant for operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, and Ramirez asked defendant to consent to a blood test. Defendant consented to a blood test, and Ramirez transported defendant to a hospital where blood was drawn. The blood sample was then sent to the Michigan State Police Laboratory for analysis.
On March 9, 2015, before testing on defendant's blood sample had been conducted, defendant's attorney sent Trooper Ramirez, the Jackson County Prosecutor, and the Michigan State Police Forensic Science Division a document entitled "Notice of Defendant's Withdrawal of Consent to Search, Demand to Cease and Desist Further Warrantless Search, and Demand for Return of Blood Samples." In relevant part, this document stated:
NOW COMES the Defendant, GLORIANNA WOODARD, by and through counsel, the Maze Legal Group, PC, by William J. Maze, and hereby provides notice that she withdraws her consent for further voluntary search of her blood sample based upon the following:
1. Defendant, GLORIANNA WOODARD, is alleged to have voluntarily permitted a withdrawal of his [sic] blood on or about March 6, 2015.
* * *
*381 6. Defendant now affirmatively withdraws her consent for further search, demanding that the police, prosecutor and state laboratory immediately cease and desist from further search of the blood evidence, demanding that these state actors immediately obtain a search warrant to justify any search and/or continued detention of the blood sample, returning the blood sample to Defendant forthwith if a warrant is not sought and obtained immediately by the government.
* * *
9. If the Prosecuting Attorney, Michigan State Police Forensic Science Division, or the Michigan State Police Jackson Post, desires to keep the blood sample and/or conduct any testing that has not already occurred on the blood sample, [defendant] demands that any search be conducted pursuant to a search warrant.
The parties who received this notice did not heed its demand to cease further testing and return the blood sample. The subsequent analysis of defendant's blood sample revealed that she had a blood alcohol content of 0.212% at the time of the blood draw. The prosecutor charged defendant with operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated, third offense, and operating a vehicle while her license was suspended or revoked.
In the circuit court, defendant moved to suppress the results of her blood alcohol test, asserting that although she consented to the blood draw, she revoked her consent before the tests were conducted and, in the absence of a warrant, the analysis of her blood constituted an unlawful search. In response, the prosecutor maintained that defendant did not have a privacy interest that would prevent the analysis of a lawfully obtained blood sample. Citing
People v. Perlos
,
On appeal, defendant argues that the trial court erred by denying her motion to suppress the results of her blood test. In making this argument, defendant does not dispute that she voluntary consented to Ramirez's request for a blood test and she does not challenge the lawfulness of the blood draw at the hospital. Instead, defendant maintains that the subsequent analysis of her blood constituted a separate and distinct search. Because consent may be withdrawn at any time, defendant argues that until her blood was analyzed, she could withdraw her consent to the blood test and demand the return of her blood sample. In view of her notice to authorities withdrawing her consent, defendant contends that any tests on her blood without a warrant were per se unreasonable and that the results of the testing must be suppressed.
II. STANDARDS OF REVIEW
A trial court's factual findings made when ruling on a motion to suppress are reviewed for clear error.
People v. Tavernier
,
*383
People v. Mungo (On Second Remad)
,
III. ANALYSIS
"The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and its counterpart in the Michigan Constitution guarantee the right of persons to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures."
People v. Kazmierczak
,
However, there are exceptions to the warrant requirement, including a search conducted pursuant to consent.
People v. Borchard-Ruhland
,
[A] suspect may revoke his consent to search at any time. The revocation of the consent to search, however, does not invalidate the search conducted pursuant to the valid consent of the suspect before that consent was revoked. Any evidence obtained during the consensual portion of that search is admissible. However, once the consent is revoked, the police must stop the search unless continuing the search may be justified under some basis other than the suspect's consent. Finally, any evidence obtained during the consensual portion of the search may be considered in determining whether a continued search may be justified on some other basis. [Id. at 500-501 ,502 N.W.2d 353 .]
In this case, the state conduct at issue involves the collection of a blood sample from defendant's person and the analysis of that blood to determine defendant's blood alcohol content. In defendant's view, this conduct may be subdivided into two distinct searches, so that the *385 analysis of defendant's blood is a "search" for which she may withdraw her consent at any time before this analysis is conducted. In comparison, the prosecution maintains that, once the blood sample was lawfully removed from defendant's body and collected by the police for alcohol analysis, the "search" was complete, meaning that defendant was not entitled to the return of this lawfully seized evidence and that she no longer had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the alcohol content of that sample. In short, we must decide whether the analysis of a blood sample, obtained with consent for the purposes of alcohol testing, constitutes a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
A. THE SEARCH AND SEIZURE
We begin our analysis with the unremarkable proposition that drawing defendant's blood for analysis constituted a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
Birchfield v. North Dakota
, 579 U.S. ----, ----,
It follows from our recognition that the blood draw was a search that the evidence seized during the course of the consent search was defendant's blood. See
State v. Perryman
,
B. THE ANALYSIS OF LAWFULLY OBTAINED EVIDENCE
Given that the evidence seized during the valid consent search was defendant's blood, the question becomes whether the subsequent analysis of this lawfully obtained evidence constitutes a "search" so that,
*387
before the analysis was conducted, defendant could withdraw her consent, prevent the blood alcohol testing, and demand the return of her blood sample. We recognize that "obtaining and examining" evidence may be considered a search, provided that doing so "infringes an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable[.]"
Skinner
,
We are not aware of any binding cases that specifically considered whether consent to blood alcohol testing may be withdrawn before the analysis of the voluntarily provided blood sample. However, there is persuasive authority holding that, once a blood sample has been lawfully obtained for purposes of analysis, the subsequent testing of that sample has " 'no independent significance for fourth amendment purposes.' "
Dodd v. Jones
,
*306 While these cases have often been decided in the context of blood seized via a warrant, they stand for the proposition that the testing of blood evidence "is an essential part of the seizure,"
*388
State v. VanLaarhoven
,
In reaching this conclusion, the Court in
Snyder
relied heavily on
Schmerber v. California
,
In rejecting efforts to characterize the collection and analysis of blood evidence as separate searches, courts have frequently concluded that there is no objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in a sample lawfully obtained for the purposes of analysis, such that testing of the sample does not involve a search or seizure with Fourth Amendment implications. See
State v. Hauge
,
*307 standards."). 4 More fully, these cases reason as follows:
*390 It is also clear that once a person's blood sample has been obtained lawfully, he can no longer assert either privacy claims or unreasonable search and seizure arguments with respect to the use of that sample. Privacy concerns are no longer relevant once the sample has already lawfully been removed from the body, and the scientific analysis of a sample does not involve any further search and seizure of a defendant's person. In this regard we note that the defendant could not plausibly assert any expectation of privacy with respect to the scientific analysis of a lawfully seized item of tangible property, such as a gun or a controlled substance. Although human blood, with its unique genetic properties, may initially be quantitatively different from such evidence, once constitutional concerns have been satisfied, a blood sample is not unlike other tangible property which can be subject to a battery of scientific tests. ... [ State v. Barkley ,144 N.C. App. 514 , 519,551 S.E.2d 131 (2001) (quotation marks and citation omitted).]
From these various persuasive authorities, we draw the basic understanding that blood which has been lawfully collected for analysis may be analyzed without
*391
infringing additional privacy interests or raising separate Fourth Amendment concerns.
5
*308
More specifically, the notion that there is no privacy interest that would prevent blood alcohol analysis on a sample of blood lawfully collected for that purpose is bolstered by Michigan's implied consent statutes and the Michigan Supreme Court's decision in
Perlos
,
By extension, this reasoning applies to situations in which, in the context of drunk-driving, police procure a blood sample for alcohol testing pursuant to a defendant's consent. The individual has consented to the taking of blood, meaning that the sample has been lawfully obtained; and, once the sample is collected with consent, the analysis of the blood is for the limited purpose of determining the blood alcohol content.
7
Cf.
No claim can be made that items seized in the course of a consent search, if found, must be returned when consent is revoked. Such a rule would lead to the implausible result that incriminating evidence seized in the course of a consent search could be retrieved by a revocation of consent.
This approach is consistent with our decision in
Powell
and with the decisions of several other courts that have considered the issue. See
United States v. Mitchell
,
IV. CONCLUSION
Ultimately, this is not a case about withdrawing consent to search; it is a case in which the search to obtain defendant's blood has been completed with her consent and defendant nevertheless wishes to prevent *396 the police from examining the evidence-i.e., her blood-which was lawfully collected during the consent search. 10 However, once the blood was lawfully procured by the police pursuant to defendant's consent, the subsequent analysis of the blood did not constitute a separate search, and defendant simply had no Fourth Amendment basis on which to object to the analysis of the blood for the purpose for which it was drawn. Stated differently, once police procured a sample of defendant's blood pursuant to her consent, she had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the blood alcohol content of that sample and it could be examined for that purpose without her consent. Consequently, defendant's efforts to withdraw consent after her blood had already been collected came too late to invalidate the consent search or to deprive police of the authority to analyze the lawfully obtained blood in their possession to determine defendant's blood alcohol content. It follows that defendant was not entitled to suppress the result of her blood alcohol test, and the trial court did not err by denying defendant's motion to suppress. 11 *311 *397 Affirmed and remanded for further proceedings. We do not retain jurisdiction.
Meter and K. F. Kelly, JJ., concurred with Hoekstra, P.J.
People v. Woodard , unpublished order of the Court of Appeals, entered April 4, 2017 (Docket No. 336512).
While the decisions of lower federal courts and other state courts are not binding on this Court, they may be considered as persuasive authority.
People v. Jackson
,
Whether an expectation is one that society recognizes as reasonable depends on the totality of the circumstances.
Antwine
,
See also
State v. Loveland
,
Relying on
Riley v. California
, 573 U.S. ----, ----,
The implied consent statutes have since been amended, and the comparable provision may now be found at MCL 257.625a(6)(e).
We note that there has been no suggestion that the police used defendant's blood sample for any purpose other than the analysis of her blood alcohol content.
According to defendant, the implied consent statute and concerns about drunk driving cannot lead to the conclusion that consent to a blood test cannot be withdrawn following the procurement of the voluntary sample. Specifically, defendant contends that this result is foreclosed by
McNeely
,
Defendant concedes that typically evidence seized during a consent search need not be returned, but she contends that this rule should not apply to prevent her from demanding the return of her blood because, unlike other types of evidence, it is not "immediately apparent" that her blood contains evidence of criminality. Such an argument is disingenuous because many types of evidence do not evince criminality without some analysis. For example, until tested, police may strongly suspect that a white powder is cocaine, but it could also be sugar or talcum powder. See
Jacobsen
,
On appeal, defendant analogizes this case to a consensual pat-down in which the suspect withdraws consent before a police officer reaches into the suspect's pocket containing baggies of possible drugs. Just as the suspect may prevent the search of his pocket by withdrawing consent, defendant contends she may prevent the search of her blood. Such a comparison is not apropos. Instead, to borrow defendant's analogy, we are faced with a situation in which the police have already, with defendant's consent, searched the pocket and seized the baggies. The question is whether, having lawfully obtained the baggies, the police may analyze the contents of the baggies to ascertain whether or not the substance is a drug.
As an alternative argument, the prosecutor argues that, even if defendant effectuated the withdrawal of her consent, there was probable cause to obtain a warrant for the analysis of defendant's blood. Having determined that defendant did not withdraw her consent in time to invalidate the analysis of her blood, we need not reach this issue.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Glorianna WOODARD, Defendant-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 44 cases
- Status
- Published