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State v. Dearmas2/13/2004
r accused of crimes.
Finally, as was noted in DiStefano, although the General Assembly frequently has extended the scope of judicial authority to issue search warrants through specific statutes, it has declined to authorize the general search and seizure of a person's bodily fluids whenever the state can articulate probable cause or even a rational reason to do so. DiStefano, 764 A.2d at 1168 (citing G.L. 1956 § 11-19-24 (gambling apparatus and paraphernalia); G.L. 1956 § 11-34-4 (house of prostitution); G.L. 1956 § 19-26-13 (premises of pawnbroker); G.L. 1956 § 30-9-11 (national guard adjutant general may obtain warrant to search for military equipment); G.L. 1956 § 3-12-4 (adulterated liquors); G.L. 1956 § 4-1-19 (place connected with acts that are cruel to animals); G.L. 1956 § 12-5.1-4 (authorizing interception of wire communications); G.L. 1956 § 12-5.2-2 (authorizing use of pen register or trap and trace device)). On the contrary, the Legislature has deliberately identified certain limited and specific circumstances under which a person must submit to the involuntary extraction of his or her blood. See G.L. 1956 § 11-37-17 (requiring convicted sexual offenders to submit to blood test to allow state to test for presence of sexually transmitted diseases); G.L. 1956 § 12-1.5-8 (authorizing state to forcibly extract DNA samples from persons found guilty of certain enumerated crimes); G.L. 1956 § 15-8-18.1 (requiring parties to a paternity action to submit to blood tests). But thus far the General Assembly has declined to enact any statutes specifically granting trial judges the power to issue a search warrant that would authorize the state to seize blood from an unwilling suspect accused of some crime -- notwithstanding the existence of probable cause to believe the blood sample would be probative of the suspect's guilt or innocence in a pending criminal case. Because the Legislature has not hesitated to enact statutes extending the warrant authority of our trial courts in certain other limited specific circumstances, and because it has enacted statutes identifying particular situations in which persons must submit to involuntary blood tests, we decline to expand the Superior Court's general warrant authority by interpreting "property" to include the blood of a living person who does not consent to such a seizure.
In its brief, the state argues that State v. Souza, 425 A.2d 893 (R.I. 1981), not our DiStefano decision, should control the disposition of this case. In Souza, this Court stated that " here is no question that a court may, upon a showing of probable cause, issue an order authorizing the taking of a blood sample from a person who has been charged with or suspected of a criminal offense, in respect to which the blood sample is determined to be relevant." Id. at 899. Significantly, however, the defendant in Souza failed to raise the "property" limitation in § 12-5-2 as a reason why the court in that case lacked authority to issue the blood-seizure order. Thus, the Souza Court did not have to decide whether the property-seizure limitation on search warrants in § 12-5-2 also applied to blood-seizure orders, because, as a practical matter, such orders were the equivalent of a search warrant for blood. Moreover, the above-quoted language from Souza does not address the precise issue we are considering today. In Souza, 425 A.2d at 897, the state initially obtained a warrant to seize a sample of blood from the defendant, but a motion justice granted a pretrial motion to quash the warrant, finding that the affidavit upon which it was based contained insufficient information. Thereafter, during the course of the trial, the trial justice granted the state's application to seize blood from the defenda
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