Schmerber v. California

Petitioner
Armando Schmerber
Respondent
State of California
Petitioner's Claim
That the blood test administered during his hospital stay for injuries suffered from a traffic accident violated his Fifth Amendment right against providing self-incriminating evidence as well as his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendmentrights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Thomas M. McGurrin
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Edward L. Davenport
Justices for the Court
William J. Brennan, Jr. (writing for the Court), Tom C. Clark, John MarshallHarlan II, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting
Hugo Lafayette Black, William O. Douglas, Abe Fortas, Earl Warren
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
20 June 1966
Decision
The Court found that the Fifth Amendment did not prohibit blood tests to determine intoxication levels, because the Fifth Amendment applies to only interrogation and testimony and because the results of blood tests constituted neither testimony nor evidence of a confession or other communicative act. In addition, the Court concluded that the blood test did not a constitute an unreasonable search and seizure given the circumstances.
Significance
Schmerber v. California brought about a period of increased pro-government decisions concerning the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments' prohibition of unreasonable and arbitrary searches and seizures, undermining the previoustrend of pro-individual decisions dating back to 1886 in Boyd v. United States. The Court's decision also provided law enforcement agents, especially police and prosecutors, with a strong scientific method for determining intoxication. Furthermore, courts used this case as a starting point for rulings on compulsory employee drug testing in later decades.
The Accident, Arrest, and Conviction
The Los Angeles police found Schmerber at an accident scene and smelled alcohol on his breath. The police also noticed other symptoms of intoxication bothat the scene and at the hospital and decided to arrest him for drunk driving. They informed him of his right to have a lawyer present, to remain silent,and to have a lawyer appointed, if he could not afford one. While Schmerber was in the hospital, the police ordered a blood test to determine if Schmerberwas intoxicated, even though Schmerber refused based on advice from his lawyer. The test revealed Schmerber was drunk at the time of the accident and thetrial court admitted the test as evidence.
Schmerber was convicted and appealed the decision. Citing numerous constitutional right violations, he arguing that the blood test was administered against his will and its use as evidence obstructed due process of law granted by the Fourteenth Amendment. He contended that it also violated his right to refuse to provide self-incriminating evidence under the Fifth Amendment, and subjected him to unreasonable searches and seizures, violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Appellate Department of the California SuperiorCourt agreed with the lower court, rejecting Schmerber's arguments and upholding his conviction. Finally, Schmerber petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, still maintaining the police violated numerous constitutional rights.
A Difficult Decision
Since the Court had made several new decisions related to the issue of bloodtests after it initially considered the issue, it decided to hear the case, which began on 25 April 1966. Writing for the majority, Justice Brennan firstaddressed the due process claim. He pointed out that in a similar case, Breithaupt v. Abram, the Court upheld the conviction even though the doctortook the blood test under police orders while the driver was unconscious andcould not refuse the test. Therefore, the Court rejected Schmerber's claim of violated due process, finding no injustice.
Next the Court explored Schmerber's claim of Fifth Amendment right violations. The Fifth Amendment states that no one "shall be compelled in any criminalcase to be a witness against himself," which Schmerber and his attorney argued included using blood samples and presumably other medical reports against the accused unless they authorize it. The Court disagreed, holding that thoughthe police required Schmerber to submit to the blood test and its results were used against him, the evidence obtained from the blood test and the chemical analysis did not constitute self-incriminating testimony. The Court notedthe potential for a constitutional right violation in that the police did notobtain their own evidence, but the Court reasoned that the Fifth Amendment did not exclude the body of the accused as evidence. Just as state and federalcourts generally agree that this amendment allows compulsory fingerprinting,photographing, measuring, and so forth, so it also can allow tests, according to the majority. The Court concluded that the taking of the blood test never forced Schmerber to give any statement or testimony or personally communicate guilt in any way and hence fell outside of the Fifth Amendment's scope.
Schmerber also felt the police denied him his Sixth Amendment right to legalrepresentation. However, since the Court decided that the police can order blood tests whether or not the accused consent to them, it held that Schmerber's argument that the police denied him his right to counsel did not apply to this situation, because he had no choice and the police were not interrogatinghim. Consequently, the majority rejected this claim, too.
Justice Brennan then tackled the most complicated claim made by Schmerber: that the blood test violated his Fourth Amendment right not to be subjected tounreasonable searches and seizures. The majority argued that although the Fourth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment, which applied the Fourth Amendment to the state level, protects citizens from unreasonable and arbitrary searches and seizures, it does not prevent the police from ordering blood tests. Because the Court decided that the Fifth Amendment allowed the police to obtain blood tests and to use them as evidence without trespassing on the right not to provide self-incriminating testimony, it reasoned that the Fourth Amendment can allow the police to obtain blood tests in certain circumstances, justas the Fourth Amendment permits the police to search homes in certain circumstances. Furthermore, the Court noted that under California law, the police may arrest suspects without a warrant for felonies, if they have probable cause. In Schmerber's case, the majority agreed that the police had probable cause because he smelled of liquor and displayed other symptoms associated with drunkenness. The Los Angeles police arrested Schmerber in this manner while inhe was in the hospital before they ordered the blood test.
Since Schmerber was under arrest at the time of the test, the Court concludedthat the police can continue to examine a suspect after arrest, such as whensearching for weapons. In the same way, the Court reasoned the police couldrequire a blood test once they arrested a suspect. Finally, the majority argued that since the evidence of Schmerber's intoxication could disappear from his blood in a few hours, the need to preserve the evidence overrode the needto obtain a search warrant, as the Court decided in Preston v. United States.
Nonetheless, the case drew mixed opinions from the justices. Four of them dissented, because the case addressed some difficult legal questions concerningthe rights of the accused. Justice Warren felt that the decision broke the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee to due process of law. Justices Black and Douglas contended that the blood test did indeed force Schmerber to provide self-incriminating testimony. In a separate opinion, Justice Douglas also argued that the blood test violated Schmerber's right to due process as well as his right to be free from arbitrary searches and seizures under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Finally, Justice Fortas disagreed because he believed the blood test amounted to self-incriminating evidence and a state cannot extract blood from anyone unless voluntarily allowed under the due process of law clause.
Impact
This case helped introduce a new era of Fourth Amendment U.S. Supreme Court decisions, replacing an older era that followed Boyd v. United States.In the Boyd case, the Court called for the broad application of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures, extending to "allinvasions on the part of the government and its employees of the sanctity ofa man's home and the privacies of his life." The Court's decision in the Schmerber case, however, limited its application and granted a new exception under certain conditions.
Schmerber v. California also became an important case for later hearings on mandatory employee drug testing. Since the Court decided that blood tests or other extractions of bodily fluids constituted searches and seizures, some courts held that urine tests also were searches by analogy. Consequently,various other cases--Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn. and Carroll v. United States--had to decide under what conditions these tests were reasonable in order not to violate the Fourth Amendment.

We thus conclude that the present record shows no violation of petitioner's right under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. It bears repeating, however, that we reach this judgment only on the facts of the present record. The integrity of an individual's person is a cherished value of our society. That we today hold thatthe Constitution does not forbid the States minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions in no way indicates that it permits more substantial intrusions, or intrusions under other conditions.

Related Cases

• Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886).
  
• Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432 (1957).
  
• Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961).
  
• Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964).

Justice Abe Fortas
Born on 19 June 1910 in Memphis to a Jewish immigrant, Abe Fortas was a gifted scholar at a very early age. Fortas started his law career as a professor,under the tutelage of William O. Douglas (also a Supreme Court justice). He excelled in his profession, becoming a prominent Washington attorney before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 1965. Fortas was well-known and reveredfor was the amount of pro bono work which he did. One of his pro bono clients was Clarence Gideon. Gideon was convicted in a Florida statecourt of breaking into a poolroom and taking the money from a vending machine. Gideon was unable to afford an attorney and the court refused to appoint one. He successfully prepared his own appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that the state's refusal to provide legal counsel was illegal. The Court agreed to hear his case and Fortas was appointed his attorney.
That case Gideon v. Wainwright resulted in the landmark ruling that every person, regardless of financial means, was entitled to an attorney in a criminal case.
Sources
Paddock, Lisa. Facts About the Supreme Court of the United States. NewYork: H. W. Wilson and Company, 1996.