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State v. Wintlend11/6/2002
nd what does the State get in return for this minimal intrusion? The United States Supreme Court has long recognized a state's desire to detect, eliminate and prevent certain hazardous conditions to public health as sufficiently compelling to justify the intrusion on privacy occasioned by suspicionless searches or seizures. Nat'l Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 668 (1989) ("Our precedents have settled that, in certain limited circumstances, the Government's need to discover such latent or hidden conditions, or to prevent their development, is sufficiently compelling to justify the intrusion on privacy entailed by conducting such searches without any measure of individualized suspicion."). If such is the case with suspicionless activity, imagine the government's right when there is not only suspicion, but probable cause. Intoxicated driving on our highways is a hazardous condition to public health. The high volume and inherent mobility of motor vehicles indicates that the threat by intoxicated drivers is very real. Thus, there is a compelling need to get intoxicated drivers off the highways and keep them off until they have, hopefully, learned their lesson. The implied consent law is for a compelling purpose and is not overly intrusive. It is not unreasonable. Therefore, at whatever point the motorist is coerced into making a decision, be it at the time the person applies for and obtains a license, or when the person begins operating the vehicle on each particular occasion, or after arrest, the statute's coerciveness is not unreasonable.
. In closing, we observe that long after the motorist obtains his or her license, the motorist still has choices. There is a choice about whether to drink and drive, for example. The motorist may decide to get behind the wheel and drive or may decide not to do so. But common sense and human experience tell us that a motorist knows that immoderate consumption and driving a motor vehicle is not met with favor. Knowing this information, the motorist nonetheless maintains the freedom to decide whether to drive. If the motorist makes the choice to drive, but is stopped and arrested, the motorist's plethora of choices is whittled down to one self-induced Hobson's choice-take the test or lose the license to drive. It is the motorist who has voluntarily asserted his or her autonomy, which freedom of choice has put the motorist, as Justice Sutherland put it, "between the rock and the whirlpool." See Frost v. R.R. Comm'n, 271 U.S. 583, 593 (1926). As one commentator noted, " t would be paradoxical indeed for individuals to claim that they were coerced into making a decision (thus escaping the consequences thereof) that is compelled by a predicament in which they willingly placed themselves ab initio." Eustace T. Francis, Combatting the Drunk Driver Menace: Conditioning the Use of Public Highways on Consent to Sobriety Checkpoint Seizures-The Constitutionality of a Model Consent Seizure Statute, 59 Alb. L. Rev. 599, 656 (1995). Thus, even if the coercive event takes place at the time the Informing the Accused form is read to the accused motorist, it is an entirely reasonable form of coercion. We therefore reject Wintlend's argument.
By the Court. -- Judgment affirmed.
Recommended for publication in the official reports.
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