Pa. High Court: Warrant Needed for Blood Draws for Injured, Impaired Drivers

If you drink to excess, get behind the wheel and cause a crash that takes someone’s life, a succession of laws have set out increasing consequences.

But, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clarified in a ruling this month, there are limits to police and prosecutors’ pursuit of drunk drivers.

In a 2021 case out of Cumberland County, the court ruled in a 5-2 decision that police, in most cases where an injured or impaired driver can’t or won’t give consent, must get a search warrant to draw blood.

The ruling upholds a 2023 decision by Cumberland County Judge Albert H. Masland.

Masland found a provision in state law that had long operated as permission for cops to get blood samples from crash patients without a warrant violates Constitutional rights against improper search and seizure.

David Rudovsky, a noted Philadelphia civil rights lawyer who argued Carlisle-area resident Larry Hunte’s appeal, called it an important affirmation of 4th Amendment rights.

“It again recognizes that an invasive procedure like a blood draw is a search of person,” Rudovsky said of the court’s decision, “and you don’t give up that right by the fact that you get a driver’s license.”

Rudovsky’s reference was to the court’s distinction between less-invasive breath tests, which, if refused, can lead to license suspensions under the state’s implied consent provisions, and blood draws.

Blood samples, a series of federal court rulings have held, are a different beast, and the current Pennsylvania law - by not even giving a suspect a chance to refuse - doesn’t recognize that.

Blood draws are especially important to police and prosecutors in many impaired driving cases because they are the only way to prove there are drugs in someone’s system.

Drugs make up an increasing number of DUI cases across Pennsylvania: 36 percent of all cases in 2024, according to the Pennsylvania DUI Association; as opposed to 11 percent in 2007.

The court’s decision still grants prosecutors the ability to ask for blood draws from hospitalized crash victims under “exigent circumstances,” like when logistics of getting a warrant would make it impossible to get blood before the alcohol dissipates to the point of uselessness.

But writing for the majority, Justice David Wecht stated those cases should be increasingly rare given 21st century communications technology.

“There is little reason for concern that satisfying the 4th Amendment in cases such as this will prove to be particularly burdensome for law enforcement or lead to any appreciable reduction in the effectiveness of DUI investigations,” Wecht wrote.

“What the General Assembly cannot do, however, is subject the people to unconstitutional searches by legislative fiat.”

The standard, he concluded, must be a warrant.

PennLive left messages with case prosecutors and the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association about the decision, but did not hear back Friday.

County prosecutors said the test results in the Hunte case should stand in part because state troopers working the case actually did get two separate warrants to retrieve the samples from hospital staff, and then to analyze them.

Wecht said that was immaterial because they shouldn’t have been able to get at the blood in the first place.

“The physical intrusion into the body itself is a constitutionally significant search, regardless of the treatment of the samples after the fact,” Wecht wrote.

Hunte, 27 when the crash occurred, was charged with homicide by vehicle while DUI and other counts in October 2021 for causing the accident that claimed the life of Mary Staggs, his then-girlfriend.

The June 7 crash occurred about 10:30 p.m. in the 2100 block of Newville Road, West Pennsboro Township, not far from where Staggs, 25, lived with her mother.

Case records state the vehicle slammed into a utility pole, causing it to roll and ejecting both Hunte and Staggs. They were not wearing seat belts.

Emergency responders arrived before police and found the driver and passenger laying several feet east of the crumpled vehicle. They detected an odor of alcohol on Hunte’s breath and slurred speech.

They asked Hunte if he had been drinking and he reportedly said: ‘We both were.’

They asked who was driving and Hunte said he had been driving.

Both were taken to hospitals, where Staggs died from her injuries.

Hunte, police said, was unconscious when they arrived at the hospital to interview him, prompting troopers to request the warrantless blood draw.

His blood alcohol content was eventually recorded at .178, which is more than twice the legal driving limit of .08, according to an affidavit filed against Hunte.

Hunte’s case is still pending in Cumberland County Court, but Masland’s ruling places all testimony about the specific blood-alcohol content off-limits to prosecutors.

Trial attorney Ed Spreha said he is gratified with the court’s decision, and is ready to get the focus back to a final disposition of the charges against his client.

Staff writer Christine Vendel contributed to this report.

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