MN implied consent law does not violate the Fourth Amendment

The Minnesota implied consent law does not violate the Fourth Amendment because it is based on probable cause and exigent circumstances. State v. Netland, 742 N.W.2d 207 (Minn. App. 2007). The court’s free link is not up at the time of this posting, but LexisOne has it. This is the concluding paragraph, and how the court gets to this point is interesting and completely noncontroversial:

Thus, contrary to Netland’s argument, the State of Minnesota does not condition a person’s driving privileges on surrendering a constitutional right. Before “the [chemical] test may be required of a person,” the implied-consent law requires the requesting officer to have probable cause to believe a person is driving while impaired. Minn. Stat. § 169A.51, subd. 1(b). And if, as it often will be, a warrantless search is necessary to prevent evidence of the driver’s intoxication from imminent destruction by physiological processes, the exigent-circumstances exception authorizes the search. See Shriner, 739 N.W.2d at 439 (emphasizing that “the exigent-circumstances requirement is not a high threshold”). Since the Fourth Amendment does not grant the right to refuse a search supported by probable cause and authorized by exigent circumstances, the implied-consent law does not require a driver to surrender the right to be free from unreasonable searches.

Defendant’s wife let in an officer with an arrest warrant for defendant in hand so he could see for himself that the defendant was not there. In plain view, there was paraphernalia for meth manufacturing, which the officer seized. The seizure was valid, and consent to enter with an arrest warrant was not coerced. Pate v. Commonwealth, 243 S.W.3d 327 (Ky. 2007), released for publication November 1, 2007.

There was an objective basis for defendant’s stop from the only evidence, so it was valid. United States v. Tejeda-Ramirez, 259 Fed. Appx. 535 (4th Cir. 2007)* (unpublished).

The CI was of unknown reliability, but it was based on personal observations occurring within the previous 24 hours, and the officer was able to corroborate psuedophedrine purchases from records of sales to the defendant. “Under a totality of the circumstances test, the state court judge had sufficient information to make a finding that there was a fair probability that evidence of a crime would be found in Nickels’s residence and garage. Therefore, Wilkerson has not rebutted the presumption that the search was legal.” The good faith exception also applied. United States v. Wilkerson, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90852 (S.D. Ill. December 11, 2007).*