Schmerber v. California
Case Date: 05/05/1966
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Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which held that a State may, over the suspect's protest, have a physician extract blood from a person suspected of drunken driving without violating the suspect's Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution rights. (The Court did not address the Fourth Amendment question because of a previous decision in Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432 (1957); however, that decision was based on the since over-ruled holding that the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule was not incorporated to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment.) [This is not correct. The Court DOES address the Fourth Amendment issue. The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures was not an issue in Breithaupt v. Abram, 352 U.S. 432 (1957), because the Fourth Amendment was not incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment protections yet. It was incorporated at the time of this decision, so the Court ruled that compelled blood draws absent a warrant do not constitute unreasonable search and seizure when the officer has "clear indication" that the procedure will yield evidence of the suspected crime, when the test is a reasonable one that is performed by a physician in a medical environment. The Court ruled that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination is not even implicated.]
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