Summary
The Oregon Supreme Court held that the state failed to establish exigent circumstances justifying police officers’ warrantless entry into the defendant’s home to obtain blood-alcohol evidence. The state did not prove that obtaining a warrant would have delayed efforts to preserve the evidence. The court reversed the Court of Appeals and remanded for further consideration.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the natural dissipation of alcohol in a suspect's body established exigent circumstances permitting police to enter the suspect's home without a warrant to secure blood-alcohol evidence.
- Whether the State proved that obtaining a warrant before entering the home would likely have delayed obtaining and testing a blood or breath sample and thereby caused the loss of dissipating evidence.
Holdings
- The State failed to prove exigent circumstances because the record did not establish that obtaining a warrant before entering Ritz's home would have delayed obtaining and testing a breath or blood sample or otherwise delayed preservation of dissipating blood-alcohol evidence.
- The court declined to decide what factors courts should consider, or how they should be weighed, in determining whether an exigency search is justified, because the State failed to establish the existence of an exigency on the facts presented.
Key quotations
“The appropriate question is whether obtaining a warrant would have delayed obtaining and testing a sample of defendant’s breath or blood.” (795)
“The state therefore failed to establish that the officers reasonably believed that they were faced with an exigency in this case.” (799)
Factual background
Police investigated a single-vehicle crash near Ritz's trailer and developed probable cause to believe that Ritz had driven under the influence of intoxicants. After officers later saw Ritz outside his trailer, he retreated inside and refused to come out; officers entered through an open window and arrested him. At the jail, approximately four hours after he had driven, Ritz volunteered for a breath test that showed a 0.14 percent blood-alcohol concentration. The officers had not obtained a warrant before entering the trailer, partly because they were concerned that alcohol in Ritz's body would dissipate.
Procedural history
After a single-vehicle crash, police entered Ritz's trailer without a warrant, arrested him, and obtained blood-alcohol evidence. The Curry County Circuit Court denied Ritz's suppression motion, relying in part on exigent circumstances arising from the dissipation of alcohol. The Court of Appeals affirmed on the destruction-of-evidence rationale, and the Oregon Supreme Court granted the State's petition for review.
Remand instructions
The case was remanded to the Oregon Court of Appeals for further consideration.