Posted 1/16/2006 05:49:00 PM by Douglas

It's just a matter of time before every county in the state is out for blood when it comes to DWIs. [via]

The county, which borders San Antonio to the southeast, is joining a small list of jurisdictions in Texas to enact a program that could require motorists suspected of drunken driving to submit to blood tests.

County Attorney Russell Wilson said every law enforcement agency in the county, including state troopers, will be able to seek a court warrant for a blood sample when a motorist refuses to take a Breathalyzer test.

Wilson said he wants the program to target weekend offenders, and a local justice of the peace has volunteered to be on call to issue the necessary search warrants if needed.

Forget for a second that DWI convictions are a huge cash cow for the county. You're talking here about police actively seeking out people that may not even be a threat to the roads they occupy. Hell, they might not even been drunk. Yet Wilson County [along with others I've ranted about in the past] are setting up the system to deal with the "instant warrant" approach. Does this seem right to anyone that doesn't work for MADD?

And what about this "local justice of the peace" that's volunteered to be on call to issue warrants at all hours of the day? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a judge issuing a search warrant? If all the DPS troop has to do is call up the JP and say "I got another one" and the warrant is on the way, doesn't that make the fourth amendment seem like little more than a technicality? But there's more:

But no one has fought the blood test, Waybourn said. He estimates the department has acquired warrants for blood in about 30 cases since the campaign, dubbed "We just can't take no for an answer" began in late July.

"Everybody has complied that was presented with a warrant," he said. "We've not had to use any force in taking the blood."

Doesn't that seem to imply that they're willing to use force to do so if necessary? I don't know how many state troopers it'd take to hold me down to stick a needle in my arm, but the only way anyone from the State of Texas is going to stick a needle in my arm is only after a lengthy appeals process and my death-row conversion to Islam. The State using force to draw blood from your body without your consent to collect evidence against you in your own conviction. Did I wake up in Nazi Germany all of a sudden?

Picture this: It's a typical Thursday afternoon and you decided to accompany a couple of co-workers to the bar to have a few beers and complain about your boss. You have three beers in 40 minutes and decided the queso sucks, so you head home. While driving home at 3 miles per hour under the speed limit, you reach down for your old Robert Earl Keen CD (the one that doesn't suck) and you briefly break the white on the adjacent unoccupied lane, all in plain sight of your local police officer, who happens to be a trained phlebotomist. He says you're drunk, you say you're not, and the next thing you know, you're strapped to a gurney and Johnny Law is shoving a needle in your arm to gather evidence to use against you in court, and thanks to the legal BAL being so ridiculously low, you'll probably be convicted, lose your license, car, and face between $5,000 and $10,000 in fines, depending on how much you can afford to shell out for an attorney. Sound fair? What the hell happened to America?