Posted 6/01/2006 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

The dumbest, most dangerous power grab to come out of the DWI madness yet: California allowing warrantless entry into people's home to check suspected drunk drivers.

SAN FRANCISCO Police may enter Californians' homes without warrants to arrest those suspected of driving under the influence, the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case testing the scope of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Under the Fourth Amendment, authorities are prohibited from entering a home and making an arrest without a warrant unless so-called "exigent" circumstances are present. Those include "hot pursuit" of a fleeing felon, imminent destruction of evidence and the risk of danger to the police or other persons inside or outside of a house, among others.

In this case, Justice Marvin Baxter wrote that the loss of evidence at issue was obtaining a measurement of the suspect's blood-alcohol level. Baxter added that a contrary ruling would allow "the corruption of evidence that occurs when the suspect takes advantage of any delay to ingest more alcohol -- or to claim to have done so -- or when the suspect evades police capture until he or she is no longer intoxicated."

Hold on a second. I thought this was America? Don't the police have to actually catch you doing something illegal in order to arrest you? Apparently not in California. If I back my car out of my driveway to move it to the adjacent garage while I'm shit-faced drunk, I'm equally as culpable of DWI as the guy that drove cross-town during rush hour, and that's fine if that's how you want to define the DWI laws, but put that in context with breaking someone's door down to find the "drunk driver". At what point do you decided that "exigent" powers aren't the norm, but the problem itself?

The problem with this is that police are going to use the "exigent search" excuse to kick in any door they want. Two examples come to mind. The first is that the driver is minimally drunk (somewhat less than the ridiculously low 0.08% BAL established in most states) and drives home, goes inside and chugs a bottle of Beam. Obviously this ruins the officer's case, as they can't prove to what degree the driver was intoxicated if they witnessed him down a bottle of whiskey, legally, on their own premises. The second example is when the presumed drunk driver is above the 0.08% limit, makes it home and sleeps it off, yet the police show up ten minutes later, kick down the door and require a blood test. Are either scenarios less exigent? Are they less ludicrous?

But of course, that's not what the cops are saying:

Baxter and the majority was cautious in saying the decision would not give police carte blanche powers.

Well what else would Baxter say? Police and prosecutors promised not to abuse such powers? Has this ever happened? He gets worse:

"In holding that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless entry here, we need not decide, and do not hold, that the police may enter a home without a warrant to effect an arrest of a DUI suspect in every case," Baxter wrote.

"In every case." You read it here first. If you drive home at 0.07, but the cops even think you were drunk, they can bust down your door, sans warrant, and draw your blood, and throw you in jail. Regardless if you drove home stone sober, closed the door to your private residence, and downed a bottle of Cutty Sark in five minutes.

Is this America, or the Soviet Russia we supposedly defeated to which I'm referring? I can no longer tell.

If you swerve across the middle line on your way home, the State now is justified in kicking down your door and forcibly taking your blood.. Surely I'm not the only one troubled by this.