Boating Accident/Death off Diamond Island

[jeffk]

Originally Posted by secondcurve

"The Citizen reported that Blizzard's lawyer is arguing that the results of his client's blood test should be thrown out. James Moir said a Marine Patrol affidavit failed to show probable cause that the test results from the blood samples would prove intoxication."

Doesn't running straight into an island at high rate of speed provide enough probable cause to conduct a blood test to check for intoxication and allow the evidence to be entered into the case?

The problem is in who collects the blood and for what purpose.

If an officer at the scene or at the hospital ordered the blood be drawn no warrant would have been needed because a vehicle accident happened and someone was killed. I believe the law actually says blood for BAC should be collected from all people involved in the accident. This seems NOT to have happened.

Later, after enough time had passed that it would have been pointless to draw a BAC, the police went to the hospital to compel that blood drawn there (for medical purposes) be used to obtain a BAC. This DOES require a warrant and for the warrant to be granted probable cause needed to be shown that intoxication was likely. It seems that the warrant conveniently left out part of the passenger's testimony that they had not drank very much and that Erica did NOT seem impaired. Providing only damning testimony and leaving off exonerating testimony is not a good thing to do and jeopardizes the validity of the warrant and that is why it is being challenged.

I had written about this on this thread before about the differences between blood being drawn under the orders of an officer vs. blood drawn by a hospital and then compelled as evidence. The first is a much stronger, cleaner evidence and here we see example of this.

Of course it's up to the court to decide if the warrant was defective. My gut says it was. We'll see.

[Lakewinn1]

Originally Posted by jeffk

The problem is in who collects the blood and for what purpose.

If an officer at the scene or at the hospital ordered the blood be drawn no warrant would have been needed because a vehicle accident happened and someone was killed. I believe the law actually says blood for BAC should be collected from all people involved in the accident. This seems NOT to have happened.

Later, after enough time had passed that it would have been pointless to draw a BAC, the police went to the hospital to compel that blood drawn there (for medical purposes) be used to obtain a BAC. This DOES require a warrant and for the warrant to be granted probable cause needed to be shown that intoxication was likely. It seems that the warrant conveniently left out part of the passenger's testimony that they had not drank very much and that Erica did NOT seem impaired. Providing only damning testimony and leaving off exonerating testimony is not a good thing to do and jeopardizes the validity of the warrant and that is why it is being challenged.

I had written about this on this thread before about the differences between blood being drawn under the orders of an officer vs. blood drawn by a hospital and then compelled as evidence. The first is a much stronger, cleaner evidence and here we see example of this.

Of course it's up to the court to decide if the warrant was defective. My gut says it was. We'll see.

Thanks for the clarity.... Good information to think about!

[Lakepilot]

I'll second the thanks for the clarification.

[VitaBene]

Originally Posted by jeffk

The problem is in who collects the blood and for what purpose.

If an officer at the scene or at the hospital ordered the blood be drawn no warrant would have been needed because a vehicle accident happened and someone was killed. I believe the law actually says blood for BAC should be collected from all people involved in the accident. This seems NOT to have happened.

Later, after enough time had passed that it would have been pointless to draw a BAC, the police went to the hospital to compel that blood drawn there (for medical purposes) be used to obtain a BAC. This DOES require a warrant and for the warrant to be granted probable cause needed to be shown that intoxication was likely. It seems that the warrant conveniently left out part of the passenger's testimony that they had not drank very much and that Erica did NOT seem impaired. Providing only damning testimony and leaving off exonerating testimony is not a good thing to do and jeopardizes the validity of the warrant and that is why it is being challenged.

I had written about this on this thread before about the differences between blood being drawn under the orders of an officer vs. blood drawn by a hospital and then compelled as evidence. The first is a much stronger, cleaner evidence and here we see example of this.

Of course it's up to the court to decide if the warrant was defective. My gut says it was. We'll see.

And that, folks, is why you get the best lawyer money can buy.