Mitchell v. Wisconsin
The Supreme Court ruled that when a drunk-driving suspect is unconscious and cannot be given a breath test, police generally do not need a warrant before ordering a blood test, because the situation almost always creates an emergency under the Fourth Amendment's exigent-circumstances rule.
The Court sent the case back to let the driver try to show his situation was unusual enough that the normal warrant requirement should have applied after all, so the practical rules for unconscious drunk-driving suspects nationwide were reshaped without fully resolving this particular driver's case.
“When a breath test is impossible, enforcement of the drunk-driving laws depends upon the administration of a blood test.”
Explaining why blood tests become essential when an unconscious driver cannot take a breath test.
How it got here: A trial court denied Mitchell's motion to suppress and he was convicted; the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed on certification, and he sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Gerald Mitchell was found stumbling near a lake and failed a breath test showing three times Wisconsin's legal alcohol limit. Police arrested him and took him for a more accurate breath test, but he grew too lethargic and then lost consciousness. Hospital staff drew his blood under a Wisconsin law presuming unconscious drivers have not withdrawn consent to testing, and the results showed he was over the legal limit.
The question before the Court
If a driver suspected of drunk driving is unconscious and can't take a breath test, can police order a blood test without first getting a warrant?
Why it matters
Police across the country who encounter unconscious drivers suspected of drunk driving can now order a blood draw without first getting a judge's approval in most cases. This affects how prosecutors build drunk-driving cases and how much protection unconscious suspects have against warrantless searches, while leaving a narrow escape valve for defendants who can show their case was truly unusual.
What changes now
The case goes back to the Wisconsin courts, where Mitchell may try to show his situation was unusual enough that police actually had time to get a warrant and no competing emergency prevented it. If he cannot make that showing, the blood test evidence used to convict him will stand. The broader rule the Court announced will now apply to unconscious drunk-driving cases nationwide going forward.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide that Wisconsin's implied-consent law itself creates valid consent to the search, and it did not resolve whether exigent circumstances existed on Mitchell's specific facts. It also left open the possibility that individual defendants could show their case was the unusual exception to the general rule.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed with the outcome but would have gone further, applying a simple per se rule that alcohol's natural dissipation in the bloodstream always creates an exigency once police have probable cause to believe a driver is drunk, regardless of whether the driver is conscious. He criticized the plurality's rule as difficult to administer and argued it needlessly distinguishes between ordinary and unconscious-driver cases.
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
“If there is time, get a warrant.”Sotomayor's summary of what she says the Fourth Amendment requires before a blood draw.
Justice Sotomayor argued the plurality wrongly decided an issue — exigent circumstances — that Wisconsin had explicitly conceded did not apply in the lower courts, and that the Court should not have reached beyond the question presented. She contended that under existing precedent, police must get a warrant whenever there is time to do so, and that unconscious drivers are no different from other drunk-driving suspects in this respect.
Dissent — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch argued the Court had taken the case to decide whether Wisconsin's implied-consent statute itself justified the search, but then answered a different question about exigent circumstances that neither party nor the lower courts had briefed. He would have dismissed the case as improvidently granted rather than resolve a complex new issue without proper briefing.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the exigent-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement, which allows police to search without a warrant when there is a compelling need for immediate action and no time to get judicial approval first.
- Relying on an earlier case, Schmerber v. California, which allowed a warrantless blood test because a car accident gave police other urgent duties, the Court held that exigency exists whenever alcohol evidence is dissipating AND some other factor creates pressing health, safety, or law-enforcement needs.
- The Court reasoned that an unconscious driver's own medical emergency supplies that second factor: the person must be rushed for medical care, and officers often face other urgent duties at accident scenes, leaving no realistic time to pursue a warrant.
- Because both conditions — dissipating evidence and a pressing medical emergency — are almost always present when a drunk-driving suspect is unconscious, the Court concluded that a warrant is almost never required for the blood draw in that situation.
- The Court limited this general rule by allowing a defendant to overcome the presumption on remand by showing his particular case was unusual — that his blood would not have been drawn without police seeking BAC evidence and that a warrant application would not actually have interfered with any pressing duties.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Missouri v. McNeely (569 U. S. 141)
The Court said this case goes further than McNeely because unconsciousness itself creates added urgency beyond mere alcohol dissipation.
Reaffirms Schmerber v. California (384 U. S. 757)
The Court relied on Schmerber's reasoning that dissipating alcohol plus another urgent factor justifies a warrantless blood draw.