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State v. Greene3/15/2000
ne's blood on any claim that he was validly arrested for OWI.
. Instead, the State relied on Seibel. There, the supreme court approved the extraction of a blood sample from a suspect who had been arrested for homicide by negligent operation of a motor vehicle. See Seibel, 163 Wis. 2d at 168. " e conclude that a blood sample may be drawn incident to a lawful arrest if the police reasonably suspect that the defendant's blood contains evidence of a crime." Id. at 179.
. That brings us to a potential issue posed by the facts of this case, but which Greene does not raise. Unlike Seibel, the facts of this case do not establish that the purpose of the blood draw was related to the charge recited in the outstanding warrant. In fact, the record does not even establish the offense for which the warrant was issued. The question posed is whether Seibel extends to a case such as this where there is no linkage between the crime for which the defendant is arrested and the alleged reasonable suspicion that the defendant's blood contains evidence of a crime. But because this issue was not raised in the trial court and is not argued on appeal, we do not address it further.
. Thus, the issue narrows to whether White had reasonable suspicion to believe that Greene's blood contained evidence of any crime. Greene compares this case with the four indicia of drinking identified by the Seibel court, see id. at 181-82, and argues that this case comes up short under these indicia. To the extent Greene is arguing that the Seibel indicia are the benchmark for all cases, we observe that the supreme court made no such statement. Instead, the court was merely analyzing the facts of that particular case. In short, each case must be judged on its own facts. In this case, some of the Seibel factors are present and others are not. In addition, there are other factors present in this case that were not present in Seibel that support the argument for reasonable suspicion.
. In a Terry setting, our supreme court has said that reasonable suspicion is less than probable cause, but more than a hunch. See State v. Guy, 172 Wis. 2d 86, 94, 492 N.W.2d 311 (1992). Here, White had observed Greene speeding. While many nonintoxicated persons also speed, an intoxicated person is less likely to be aware of the rules of the road and more likely to violate those rules. In addition, Greene dropped his driver's license as he attempted to hand it to White. Greene also admitted to drinking the night before. White also observed that Greene's eyes were bloodshot and glassy. Besides initially noticing an odor of intoxicants when handcuffing Greene, White observed that this odor was "quite strong" when Greene was later in the squad car. Obviously, none of these factors standing alone would constitute reasonable suspicion to believe that Greene's blood would reveal evidence of a crime. But viewed in their totality, we conclude that they sufficed to raise reasonable suspicion that Greene's blood contained evidence of the crime of OWI.
. Greene also cites to State v. Swanson, 164 Wis. 2d 437, 475 N.W.2d 148 (1991). There, the supreme court said that the police had reasonable suspicion, but arguably no probable cause to arrest, where the facts demonstrated erratic driving and an odor of intoxicants, and the incident occurred at the time bars usually close in Wisconsin. See id. at 453 n.6. The court said that these factors "should not, in the absence of a field sobriety test, constitute probable cause to arrest someone for ." Id. But we see Swanson as supporting the State, not Greene, because the issue here is reasonable suspicion, not probable cause. Thus, field sobriety tests were not necessary to support a findin
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