Plano DWI Lawyer Blog

In a guest column in a local Collin County newspaper, the Frisco Texas police department has announced that it will be seeking blood from Driving While Intoxicated suspects over the upcoming Holidays. There is nothing per se unusual about this, but for the fact that they plan to conduct the blood draw at the Frisco Police station.  The blood would be drawn from the suspect not at a hospita,l where there are facilites and equipment available to deal with an emergency should one arise, but in the confines of the Frisco Police Department.

The Texas Transportation Code section 724.017 requires that the the blood of a DWI suspect be drawn in a "sanitary place."  Is the Frisco Police Department a sanitary place within the meaning of the law?  The broader question, in my mind anway, is why?  Is the need to obtain a blood sample so urgent  that the police can't wait a few minutes to transport the arrested person to a hospital?  Not at all.  In fact, traditionally, blood draws have nearly alwsy been taken at a hospital.  In my view, the convenience of having the blood drawn a the police station is vastly outweighed by the risks associated with sticking a needle into a person about whom the police know next to nothing.  For example, the police will not know anything about the person's medical condition and history, allergies, etc.

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Today, the United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in the case of Arizona v. Gant, and breathed life back into the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizures as it relates to automobile searches. 

For almost thirty years, beginning with the United States Supreme Court decision in New York v. Belton, 395 U.S. 454 (1981), the police have been allowed to search your car after they arrest you for any offense under the so called "search incident to arrest" doctrine.  The original justification and rationale for the search incident to arrest rule was that the police must be entitled to secure the scene and recover any weapons that an arrested person might be able to reach in their car.  As years went by however, that original rationale was cast aside and courts justified any search incident to arrest regardless of whether the arrested person could access their car or not.  Courts approved of search incident to arrest searches of a person's car even when that person was in handcuffs in a police cruiser and could clearly not access their own car.  Some courts even approved of search incident to arrest searches of the arrested person's car after the arrested person was removed from the scene and was miles away from their car. 

With today's decision, police will only be entitled to make a search incident to arrest when 1) the arrestee is unsecured and 2) the arrestee is within reaching distance of the the passenger compartment at the time of the search, or 3) when it is reasonable to believe that evidence of the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.   Hopefully, the days of police searching a person's car for anything and everything following an arrest are in the past.

I am prepared to litigate the issue of search incident to arrest cases in Collin or Dallas county or statewide in Texas and seek to have evidence excluded from court.  If you have been arrested for a weapons or drug or other cases arising from a police search of your car, please call my office  toll free 866 977 4394.