Schmerber v. California
The Supreme Court ruled that police did not violate a drunk-driving suspect's constitutional rights when they had a doctor draw his blood at a hospital, without a warrant and over his objection, to test it for alcohol.
The decision drew a lasting line between the privilege against self-incrimination, which the Court said covers only speech-like evidence, and physical evidence like blood, while also setting a rule for when police may search a person's body without first getting a warrant.
“the privilege protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature”
The Court's key rule limiting the self-incrimination privilege to speech-like evidence, not physical evidence.
How it got here: A Los Angeles municipal court convicted the driver; California's appellate court affirmed, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A man was arrested at a hospital for driving under the influence after his car crashed and he and a passenger were injured. On a police officer's instruction, a doctor drew a blood sample from him despite his refusal, made on his lawyer's advice. The blood-alcohol test results were used to convict him of drunk driving in a Los Angeles court.
The question before the Court
After a drunk-driving arrest, could police have a doctor draw the driver's blood for an alcohol test without a warrant and despite his objection, and use the results against him at trial?
Why it matters
The ruling let police and prosecutors keep using blood-alcohol evidence obtained without a warrant in drunk-driving cases, as long as officers act quickly to preserve evidence that would otherwise disappear. It also shaped how courts nationwide analyze warrantless searches of the human body, balancing law enforcement needs against personal bodily privacy.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, not a temporary order. The conviction stands, and blood-alcohol evidence obtained this way in similar drunk-driving stops could continue to be used in court. The Court stressed its ruling was limited to the specific facts presented -- a quick, medically safe blood draw performed under time pressure -- leaving open how the rule applies to more invasive or less urgent bodily searches.
What this does not decide
The Court explicitly limited its holding to the facts before it: a minor, medically safe blood draw performed under genuine time pressure by medical personnel. It did not decide whether more invasive procedures, tests performed by non-medical personnel, or searches without a true emergency would be constitutional.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Harlan
Justice Harlan agreed with the Court's reasoning that the blood test involved no testimonial compulsion, but he would have gone further and held that the case does not implicate the Fifth Amendment privilege at all, referencing his own views expressed in Miranda v. Arizona.
Dissent — Justice Warren
Chief Justice Warren dissented by simply reiterating his earlier dissent in Breithaupt v. Abram, which argued against allowing forced blood extraction, without adding new reasoning specific to this case.
Dissent — Justice Black
“To reach the conclusion that compelling a person to give his blood to help the State convict him is not equivalent to compelling him to be a witness against himself strikes me as quite an extraordinary feat.”Justice Black's central objection to the majority's distinction between physical and testimonial evidence.
Justice Black argued that forcing a person to give blood so the State could analyze it and use the results against him is functionally the same as compelling him to be a witness against himself, and that the Court's 'testimonial or communicative' distinction was an unjustified narrowing of the Fifth Amendment. He would have held the privilege violated and reversed the conviction, criticizing the majority for departing from the broad reading given the privilege in Boyd v. United States.
Dissent — Justice Douglas
Justice Douglas dissented on privacy grounds, tying the case to the right of privacy recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut and arguing that forcible bloodletting is one of the clearest possible invasions of a person's bodily privacy protected by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
Dissent — Justice Fortas
Justice Fortas argued that the self-incrimination privilege applied and that, separately, the State as prosecutor has no right under the Due Process Clause to forcibly extract blood from a person over his protest, characterizing such extraction as an act of violence the State should not be permitted to use as evidence.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Relying on its earlier decision in Breithaupt v. Abram, the Court held that drawing blood at a hospital in a routine medical manner does not offend basic fairness under the Due Process Clause, even when done over a suspect's objection rather than while he is unconscious.
- The Court then addressed the privilege against self-incrimination, which lets a person refuse to be forced to give testimony against himself. It held the privilege protects only 'testimonial or communicative' evidence -- things like speech, writing, or gestures meant to convey information -- and does not protect purely physical evidence taken from the body.
- Applying that line, the Court reasoned that a blood sample is physical evidence: the suspect's own words or communications played no role, and the results depended entirely on chemical analysis, so no privilege violation occurred.
- Because the self-incrimination privilege did not apply, the Court held the suspect's right-to-counsel claim also failed, since his lawyer's advice to refuse the test could not create a right he did not otherwise have.
- Turning to the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches, the Court held that officers may conduct a warrantless bodily search when they have probable cause and face an emergency where waiting for a warrant would let the evidence disappear -- here, because alcohol dissipates from the bloodstream over time.
- The Court concluded the search was also carried out in a reasonable manner, since a doctor performed a routine, low-risk procedure in a hospital, and it emphasized that its holding was limited to these facts and did not approve more invasive or riskier bodily intrusions.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Breithaupt v. Abram (352 U.S. 432)
The Court relied on this earlier ruling to reject the due process challenge to warrantless blood testing.