State v. Niceloti-Velazquez

386 P.3d 487, 139 Haw. 203, 2016 Haw. App. LEXIS 515
Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals·Decided December 5, 2016·No. NO. CAAP-15-0000373·Published·Cited by 3 cases

Opinion

OPINION OF THE COURT BY

FOLEY, J.

Defendant-Appellant Bernard Niceloti-Ve-lazquez (Velazquez) appeals from the “Findings of Facts and Conclusions of Law” (FOFs), entered on August 29, 2014 and the “Amended Judgment and Notice of Entry of Amended Judgment,” entered on March 6, 2015 in the District Court of the Second Circuit1 (district court). Velazquez was convicted of operating a vehicle under the influence of an intoxicant in violation of Hawaii Revised Statutes (HRS) § 291E-61(a)(1), (4) (Supp. 2015).2

On appeal, Velazquez argues that the district court Erred in denying his motion to suppress evidence of his blood alcohol content, which was obtained through a warrant-less blood draw pursuant to HRS § 291E-21(2007 Repl.).

HRS § 291E-21 is the mandatory testing provision contained within Hawaii’s implied consent statute. The implied consent statute governs the administration of breath, blood, and urine tests of vehicle operators suspected of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. See HRS § 291E-11 et seq. HRS § 291E-21 provides, in relevant part:

[204] § 291E-21 Applicable scope of part; mandatory testing in the event of a collision resulting in injury or death.
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(c) In the event of a collision resulting in injury or death and if a law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that a person involved in the collision has committed a violation of section ,.. 291E-61 ... the law enforcement officer shall request that a sample of blood or urine be recovered from the vehicle operator or any other person suspected of committing a violation of section ,.. 291E-61[.]

The Hawai'i Supreme Court in State v. Entrekin, 98 Hawai'i 221, 47 P.3d 386 (2002) articulated the following standard for applying Hawaii’s mandatory testing provision:

[A] nonconsensual, warrantless blood extraction does not violate the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution, whether the person has been arrested or not, so long as (1) the police have probable cause to believe that the person is [driving under the influence] and that the blood sample will evidence that offense, (2) exigent circumstances are present, and (3) the sample is obtained in a reasonable manner.

Id. at 232, 47 P.3d at 347 (emphasis added) (interpreting HRS § 286-163 (repealed Jan. 1, 2002), the predecessor of HRS § 291E-21).3

In general, exigent circumstances are present when the demands of the occasion reasonably call for an immediate police response. More specifically, it includes situations presenting an immediate threatened removal or destruction of evidence. However, the burden, of course, is upon the government to prove the justification, and whether the requisite conditions exists is to be measured from the totality of the circumstances. And in seeking to meet this burden, the police must be able to point to specific and articulable facts from which it may be determined that the action they took was necessitated by the exigencies of the situation.

Id. at 232, 47 P.3d at 347 (emphasis added and ellipses omitted) (quoting State v. Jenkins, 93 Hawai’i 87, 102, 997 P.2d 13, 28 (2000)).

Velazquez contends the district court erred in finding that exigent circumstances existed to justify the non-consensual, warrantless extraction of his blood sample. In its FOFs denying Velazquez’s motion to suppress, the district court concluded that “[ejxigent circumstances exist to justify mandatory, non-consensual blood extraction under HRS § 291E-21 because a person’s blood alcohol level by its nature dissipates and is forever lost as time passes.” The district court did not cite to any other factors that it may have considered to conclude that exigent circumstances existed to justify the warrantless blood draw. It appears that the district court believed, under the authority prescribed by HRS § 291E-21, the risk of alcohol dissipation alone was enough to create an exigent circumstance.

The United States Supreme Court in Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141, 133 S.Ct. 1552, 185 L.Ed.2d 696 (2013), however, explicitly rejected such a conclusion and held that “in drunk-driving investigations, the natural dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream does not constitute an exigency in every case sufficient to justify conducting a blood test without a warrant.” Id. at 1568. Instead, the Supreme Court opted for a case-by-case assessment of exigency based on the totality of the circumstances. Id. at 1563 (“Whether a warrantless blood test of a drunk-driving [205] suspect is reasonable must be determined case by case based on the totality of the circumstances.”)' The McNeely court explained:

In those drunk-driving investigations where police officers can reasonably obtain a warrant before a blood sample can be drawn without significantly undermining the efficacy of the search, the Fourth Amendment mandates that they do so. We do not doubt that some circumstances will make obtaining a warrant impractical such that the dissipation of alcohol from the bloodstream will support an exigency justifying a properly conducted warrantless blood test. That, however, is a reason to decide each case on its facts, as we did in Schmerber [v. California, 384 U.S. 757 [86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908] (1966)], not to accept the considerable overgeneralization that a per se rule would reflect.

Id. at 1561 (internal citation, quotation marks, and emphasis omitted).4

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State v. Niceloti-Velazquez, 386 P.3d 487, 139 Haw. 203, 2016 Haw. App. LEXIS 515 (hawapp 2016).

386 P.3d 487 (State v. Niceloti-Velazquez) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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