Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Copyright 2006 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
All Rights Reserved
Police can enter the home of a drunken-driving suspect without a warrant in certain cases to conduct a blood-alcohol test and make an arrest, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a case from Santa Barbara, the court ruled 6-1 that the seriousness of drunken driving, and the natural dwindling of alcohol in a suspect’s blood during the time needed to get a warrant from a judge, can create an emergency that justifies an immediate entry.
“It was reasonable for the police to enter the home without a warrant in order to arrest defendant and thereby prevent the imminent destruction of evidence of his crime,’' Justice Marvin Baxter said.
Although Baxter said the ruling wouldn’t allow similar entries in every drunken-driving case, dissenting Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said the court’s logic would appear to apply to any case in which officers have reason to believe a suspected drunken driver is at home.
A long-standing provision in the law allowing immediate forcible entry into a home under narrowly defined emergency circumstances is being transformed into “a free pass for police,’' Werdegar said.
She contended that Santa Barbara police could have taken the time to get an arrest warrant for defendant Daniel Thompson without undermining their case.
The court said a woman found Thompson passed out in a van in her parking space at an apartment complex in July 2003 and decided to follow him when he awakened and drove off. She said he drove dangerously on a freeway and through a residential neighborhood.
A police officer drove to the home of the van’s owner and found the vehicle parked outside with the hood still warm.
Two officers went to the door and were denied entry, first by Thompson’s housemate and then by Thompson, whom the officers could see through the open door, staggering and apparently drunk, the court said. The officers then walked in, handcuffed Thompson and conducted a blood test, which showed his blood alcohol at 0.21 percent.
Thompson, who had two previous convictions for drunken driving, pleaded no contest to driving with a blood-alcohol level above the legal limit of 0.08 percent and to resisting an officer, the court said. He spent about 31/2 months in jail, according to prosecution records.
A state appeals court later overturned his conviction, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling that police in Wisconsin had no right to enter a drunken-driving suspect’s home without a warrant.
But California’s high court said there was an important difference between the two states: Wisconsin classified first-offense drunken driving as noncriminal conduct, subject only to civil penalties, while California makes it a misdemeanor, punishable by four days to six months in jail.
The case is People vs. Thompson, S130174.
June 2, 2006