State of Tennessee v. Corrin Kathleen Reynolds

504 S.W.3d 283, 2016 Tenn. LEXIS 821
CourtTennessee Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 3, 2016
DocketE2013-02309-SC-R11-CD
StatusPublished
Cited by95 cases

This text of 504 S.W.3d 283 (State of Tennessee v. Corrin Kathleen Reynolds) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Tennessee v. Corrin Kathleen Reynolds, 504 S.W.3d 283, 2016 Tenn. LEXIS 821 (Tenn. 2016).

Opinions

OPINION

CORNELIA A. CLARK, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court,

in which JEFFREY S. BIVINS, C.J., and HOLLY KIRBY, JJ., joined. SHARON G. LEE, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

We granted this appeal to determine whether the warrantless blood draw violated the defendant’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, section 7 of the Tennessee Constitution, and, if so, whether the exclusionary rule applies and requires suppression of the evidence. We conclude that the warrant-less blood draw violated the defendant’s federal and state constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Nevertheless, we adopt the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 180 L.Ed.2d 285 (2011), and as a result, hold that any evidence derived from testing the defendant’s blood need not be suppressed because the warrantless blood draw was obtained in objectively reasonable good-faith reliance on binding precedent. On this basis, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.

[289]*289I. Factual Background

Sometime before 8:43 p.m. on the evening of October 29, 2011, a single-vehicle accident occurred in Knox County.2 Two occupants of the vehicle were killed in the accident, and two others in the vehicle, the defendant, Corrin K. Reynolds, and Shawn Page, were transported to the University of Tennessee Medical Center (“UT Medical Center”) for medical treatment. Deputy Lee Strzelecki, a member of the crash reconstruction team for the Knox County Sheriffs Department, was tasked with interviewing the survivors at UT Medical Center. After speaking with them, Deputy Strzelecki concluded that the defendant was driving the car when it crashed, so he asked medical personnel to obtain a sample of her blood. Believing the defendant had verbally consented to the blood draw, Deputy Strzelecki did not obtain a warrant nor advise the defendant that she could refuse the blood draw, or of the legal consequences under the implied consent law should she refuse. Deputy Strzelecki also did not arrest the defendant at that time. Rather, the defendant remained hospitalized for the ensuing seven days, receiving treatment for an open right radius and ulna fracture, six rib fractures, a lumbar compression fracture, a cervical fracture, a sternum fracture, and a mesenteric hematoma.

On April 17, 2012, about six months after the accident, the Knox County Grand Jury issued a presentment charging the defendant with two counts of vehicular homicide, Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-213 (2010), one count of vehicular assault, id. § 39-13-106 (2010), one count of reckless endangerment, id. § 39-13-103 (2010), and four counts of driving under the influence of an intoxicant, id. § 56-10-401 (Supp. 2011). The defendant thereafter filed a motion to suppress any evidence derived from the blood sample obtained from her without a warrant on the night of the accident. As relevant to this appeal, the defendant argued that she neither actually nor impliedly consented to the warrantless blood draw. In response, the State argued that the defendant had given actual verbal consent to the blood draw and had impliedly consented to the blood draw pursuant to statute, fee id § 55-10-406(a)(l), (f)(1), (f)(4) (Supp. 2011).3

[290]*290At the hearing on the defendant’s first motion to suppress, conducted on April 5, 2013, Deputy Strzelecki testified, that, on October 29, 2011, he received a page at home at approximately 9:04 p.m., notifying him of “a single[-]vehicle crash with multiple occupants and ... possibly two deceased individuals.”4 He was directed to interview the survivors, who had been transferred from the crash site to UT Medical Center for treatment. Deputy Strzelecki arrived at the hospital about thirty minutes after receiving the page. By the time he arrived, Deputy Strzelecki knew the identities of the survivors, and, based upon information received from other officers, he was “fairly certain” that the defendant was driving the vehicle when it crashed. Deputy Strzelecki “proceeded to make contact with both of them and decide if [he] needed to get blood draws.” Because the accident resulted in two fatalities, Deputy Strzelecki stated that the blood draws “would have been mandatory under our investigation.”

He spoke first with Mr. Page, who confirmed that he was a passenger and that the defendant was driving the vehicle. Deputy Strzelecki then located and spoke with the defendant. She was lying on a gurney in the emergency room, waiting to be transported to or from the x-ray department, “and she was alert and conscious and was talking to” him. Although they had only a “brief discussion because there was a lot of commotion with the ER, [the defendant] stated that she had been driving and that everybody in the car had been drinking.” Deputy Strzelecki also smelled alcohol during his interaction with the defendant, and he administered the horizontal gaze nystagmus (“HGN”) test.5 The trial court allowed Deputy Strzelecki to testify as an expert about the defendant’s performance on the HGN test.6 [291]*291Deputy Strzelecki stated that the defendant exhibited all six clues for a “distinct and sustained nystagmus at maximum deviation,” caused by intoxication from alcohol or “[a]ny kind of a depressant, like a muscle relaxer or some kind of medication that has some depressant—a central nervous system depressant in it.”7 When Deputy Strzelecki asked the defendant if she would submit to the taking of a blood sample, she responded, “Do whatever you have to do.” Deputy Strzelecki interpreted this statement as the defendant verbally consenting to a blood draw, so he did not read her the implied consent form, advise her of the legal consequences of refusing consent, obtain her written consent, provide Miranda warnings,8 or place her under arrest. He explained that “[i]f a person consents, the procedure is we can get a blood draw. If the person refuses, at that point the implications of the implied consent violation are read to that person, and they’re given another opportunity if they want to change their mind and decide to consent.” At Deputy Strzelecki’s request, a hospital phlebotomist came to the emergency department and, using the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation blood collection kit Deputy Strzelecki provided, drew two vials of blood from the defendant’s arm. The vials were placed into the kit box, which was sealed, and Deputy Strze-lecki later gave the sealed kit box to a forensic technician at the scene of the accident.9 Asked whether the defendant’s consent was the only reason for- the blood draw, Deputy Strzelecki answered, “The consent and the fact that we’re—it was a double fatality. ... And also I smelled the alcohol and her admission of drinking and being the driver.” He stated that he had reasonable, suspicion that the defendant was driving while impaired.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
504 S.W.3d 283, 2016 Tenn. LEXIS 821, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-of-tennessee-v-corrin-kathleen-reynolds-tenn-2016.