ND: DUI implied consent warning doesn’t coerce consent

The DUI implied consent warning doesn’t coerce consent. One can always refuse. State v. Nagel, 2014 ND 224, 2014 N.D. LEXIS 236 (December 18, 2014):

[¶12] The next question is whether the consent was voluntary. This Court has previously determined, in the context of post-arrest chemical tests, that the state’s implied consent statute, which criminalizes refusal, is not coercive merely by the reading of the advisory. N.D.C.C. § 39-20-01; Smith, 2014 ND 152, ¶ 16, 849 N.W.2d 599; McCoy v. N.D. Dep’t of Transp., 2014 ND 119, ¶ 24, 848 N.W.2d 659. We conclude there is no logical difference between being advised of the consequences of refusal of a pre-arrest onsite screening test and a post-arrest chemical test in terms of determining voluntariness of consent. If anything, the advisory given prior to arrest may be less suspect of coercion, because the subject would not be in custody. See Smith, at ¶ 19. As a result, we find no reason to conclude the reading of the implied consent statute is coercive in the context of pre-arrest onsite screening tests and decline Nagel’s invitation to do so.