Mitchell v. Wisconsin
The Court ruled that when a drunk-driving suspect is unconscious and cannot take a breath test, police may almost always draw his blood without a warrant, because the medical emergency created by his condition leaves officers with pressing duties and no realistic time to get one.
The decision sends Gerald Mitchell's case back to Wisconsin courts, but its broader effect is to give police a general rule for handling unconscious drunk-driving suspects instead of requiring a warrant in every case.
“they may almost always order a warrantless blood test to measure the driver's BAC without offending the Fourth Amendment”
The plurality's central rule for unconscious drunk-driving suspects.
How it got here: A Wisconsin trial court denied suppression and a jury convicted Mitchell; the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed, and the Supreme Court granted review of the implied-consent question.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A Wisconsin police officer found Gerald Mitchell stumbling near a lake after a report that he had driven while very drunk. His condition worsened until he lost consciousness, and hospital staff drew his blood for a BAC test at police request without a warrant. Mitchell was convicted of drunk driving and challenged the blood draw as an unconstitutional warrantless search.
The question before the Court
Can police order a blood test without a warrant when a suspected drunk driver has passed out and cannot take a breath test?
Why it matters
Police across the country who encounter an unconscious drunk-driving suspect can now draw blood without first getting a warrant in nearly every such case, speeding up enforcement of BAC laws. Defendants retain a narrow chance to show police had time to get a warrant anyway, but the burden now favors law enforcement rather than requiring case-by-case warrant applications.
What changes now
The case returns to the Wisconsin courts, where Mitchell may try to show that his particular circumstances did not actually involve an emergency — for example, that police could have gotten a warrant without interfering with other pressing needs. This is a final merits ruling on the general legal rule, but the specific outcome for Mitchell himself remains open on remand.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Wisconsin's implied-consent statute itself creates constitutionally valid consent, did not resolve exigency for conscious drunk-driving suspects generally, and did not decide that exigent circumstances actually existed on Mitchell's specific facts — it created a general presumption for unconscious-driver cases, leaving individualized rebuttal possible on remand.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas agreed with the outcome but would have adopted a simpler, categorical rule from his earlier McNeely dissent: the natural dissipation of alcohol in the blood always creates exigent circumstances once police have probable cause to believe a driver is drunk, regardless of consciousness. He criticized the plurality's distinction between ordinary cases and cases with 'some other pressing factor' as confusing and unnecessary.
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
“If there is time, get a warrant.”Sotomayor's summary of what the Fourth Amendment requires before a blood draw.
Justice Sotomayor argued the plurality wrongly relied on an exigent-circumstances theory that Wisconsin had expressly waived and never argued below, when the State's only defense was its implied-consent statute. She would have held that the statute cannot create the actual, voluntary consent the Fourth Amendment requires, and that police must get a warrant whenever there is time to do so, which the record suggested was true here.
Dissent — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch argued the Court should not have reached the exigent-circumstances question at all, since that was not the question presented and neither the parties nor lower courts had briefed it. He would have dismissed the case as improvidently granted and waited for a case that squarely presented the exigency issue.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court asked whether the exigent-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement — which allows a warrantless search when there is a compelling need for action and no time to get a warrant — covers blood draws from unconscious drunk-driving suspects.
- It reasoned that highway safety is a compelling government interest and that BAC evidence naturally dissipates over time, making prompt testing important, though dissipation alone is not enough to justify skipping a warrant under prior precedent.
- The Court found that an unconscious suspect's condition is itself a medical emergency requiring urgent hospital care, and that officers attending to that emergency (and often to accident scenes) typically have no reasonable opportunity to pursue a warrant application.
- Combining the dissipating evidence with this added medical urgency, the Court concluded that exigent circumstances will almost always be present when a drunk-driving suspect is unconscious, similar to how a car accident created exigency in an earlier case.
- The Court left a narrow escape valve: a defendant may still show that his blood would not have been drawn without police involvement and that a warrant application would not actually have interfered with other duties, but that showing must be made on remand.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Missouri v. McNeely (569 U.S. 141)
The Court did not revisit McNeely's case-by-case rule but carved out unconscious-driver cases as almost always exigent.
Reaffirms Schmerber v. California (384 U.S. 757)
The Court relied on Schmerber's reasoning that added pressing needs beyond dissipating alcohol can create exigency.