WI: Exigency permitted warrantless blood draw of apparent heroin OD, even though he was given antidote

Officers and paramedics were called by friends to a man not breathing in a house. Defendant was found and it had signs of a drug overdose. His blood was drawn to test it, and he was given an injection of naxolone to counteract heroin-like drugs, and he started breathing. The blood test came back with morphine in his system. The blood draw was justified by a serious medical emergency to determine what they were dealing with. It would have taken two hours to get a search warrant. Seeking the source of the OD in the house, officers found heroin. State v. Parisi, 2016 WI 10, 2016 Wisc. LEXIS 10 (Feb. 24, 2016):

[*P45] The flaws in Parisi’s reasoning are two-fold. First, the test we use to analyze whether or not exigent circumstances exist is an objective one based on “the circumstances known to the officer at the time,” Smith, 131 Wis. 2d at 230, and although an officer might reasonably have believed that a two-hour delay would risk the destruction of evidence in this case because of, among other things, the rapid dissipation of heroin in the blood, it is not clear that an officer would have knowledge of the specific metabolic processes involved subsequent to ingestion of heroin, or the specific rates of each. Whether morphine was eventually found in Parisi’s blood is not relevant to what a police officer might reasonably have believed prior to conducting the blood draw. See State v. Jennifer Parisi, 2014 WI App 129, ¶12, 359 Wis. 2d 255, 857 N.W.2d 472 (“The exigent circumstances exception … does not require that officers observe actual destruction of evidence …. The exception rather requires only that officers have a reasonable belief ‘that delay in procuring a search warrant would risk destruction of evidence.'” (citing Hughes, 233 Wis. 2d 280, ¶24)).

[*P46] Second, even assuming for the sake of argument that a reasonable police officer knows that heroin is detectable in blood as morphine for several hours after ingestion, the officer in this case did not know what corroborating evidence of heroin or morphine use police would ultimately find, or what alibis Parisi might raise. Parisi might have a plausible defense to a charge based on heroin found in the residence and morphine found in his blood, but no defense to a charge based on heroin found in the residence and heroin or 6-monoacetylmorphine found in his blood. In other words, heroin or its first metabolite, 6-monoacetylmorphine, remained the most probative evidence that Parisi had used heroin.