A police officer brought a DUI suspect to a Chicago-area hospital and requested that the hospital draw his blood to be tested for the presence of alcohol. The head nurse at the hospital said that the suspect would have to be admitted pursuant to hospital policy before the blood could be drawn. That sounds fairly normal to me. However, the officer decided that he didn’t like this answer and proceeded to arrest the head nurse. She was handcuffed and stuffed in his car for 45 minutes until the situation could be resolved. You can read the story here. The handcuffs were too tight, causing her to need treatment at the hospital the following day (this happens a lot with handcuffs). I don’t know what she was arrested for, probably “obstruction” of the officer for not violating her employer’s policy, dropping everything else she was doing, and performing an immediate on-demand blood test. Naturally, she is now suing the cop.
While this case from Chicago sounds extreme, it was only recently that a similar situation came up in a Kansas DUI. Former Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline was threatening to arrest hospital personnel for obstruction if they did not immediately comply with police demands for blood tests. I am not sure that there is a true legal basis for this. Hospitals are private entities, unassociated with the government and law enforcement, and many of them take patient care and patient privacy very seriously. They shouldn’t be arrested for not dropping all of their other patients, many of whom are in the ER with serious injuries and illnesses, and violating their own policies upon the demand of the police for immediate attention. Kansas DUI laws allow police to obtain blood tests in certain situations, but I do not believe that those laws mandate the assistance of hospitals.
All of the foregoing is why many states are skipping the hospitals altogether and sending the police officers to quickie phlebotomist classes. Once “trained” to take your blood, they can just strap you down at the police station and withdraw it themselves. The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is conducting a two year study of these programs and then, no doubt, the will encourage it (i.e., require it) nationwide. You can read about that here. The laws will allow for forcibly taking the blood of people who refuse a breath test, and the blood will be taken by a law enforcement officer not a nurse or doctor. “Keep your laws off of my body!” Forget about it.
It won’t be long until Kansas goes to forced blood draws. This is the nationwide trend, unfortunately. Instead of a hospital setting, folks will get bent over the hood of their car and will have their blood withdrawn by the police on the side of the road. Any Kansas DUI lawyer ought to already have experience with interpretting and attacking blood test results, but this skill will be more and more important in the future. We have already moved into the age of big brother, and this big brother has a syringe and all of the power.