Missouri V. Mcneely Case Summary

In 2013, the Court accepted certiorari on two very significant cases that wrestled with significant Fourth Amendment issues. In Missouri v. McNeely, the respondent, McNeely, was pulled over on suspicion of driving-while-impaired after the officer witnessed him driving erratically. McNeely failed other field sobriety tests, and then refused to provide a breath sample for a preliminary breath test. The officer placed McNeely under arrest, and began to transport him back to the station. Once McNeely informed the officer that he would again refuse to provide a breath sample at the station, the officer diverted McNeely to a hospital to obtain a sample of McNeely’s blood. At the hospital, the officer read the informed-consent advisory to McNeely, and informed him that test-refusal would result in license revocation and could be used as evidence in a subsequent prosecution. McNeely still refused to consent to any testing. The officer directed a hospital technician to take a blood sample anyways, that revealed that McNeely’s blood alcohol concentration was almost twice the legal limit. McNeely was subsequently charged with driving while intoxicated, and he moved to suppress the results of the blood test on the grounds that the blood draw constituted a warrantless search that was prohibited by the

The State based the argument on the reasoning of an earlier case, Arizona v. Gant, which created an addition to the search incident-to-arrest exception regarding vehicles. In Gant the Court held that when held that when a suspect is arrested in a motor vehicle, a search of that vehicle is constitutional as a search incident-to-arrest when “it is ‘reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the