When it comes to visions of dystopian futures that are all the rage these days, one of the core concepts is the erosion of individual rights and the empowerment of a governmental structure responsible for overpowering them. Think Katniss Everdeen in "The Hunger Games."
Everdeen and her people in District 12 are among the oppressed in Suzanne Collins' book. The rule of law is whatever the president of Panem decides it is.
What’s The Point?
Major questions over the legality of using search warrants to obtain blood samples from people suspected of driving while intoxicated should be enough to stop the practice until a high court ruling on it.
The United States, once upon a time, stood for individual liberty and freedom. As government has grown massively larger, it has sometimes become difficult to see evidence of those principles, but they're still there, even as we see regular efforts to chip away at them for the public good.
It's always for the public good.
Drunk driving is, of course, a social evil our society has taken great strides to discourage in recent years. Untold thousands, perhaps millions, of lives have been saved by changing attitudes and heightened enforcement. The great good accomplished in pursuit of that goal can also promote overly aggressive notions of enforcement. For the public good.
That appears to be the attitude behind the approach by the Benton County Sheriff's Office, apparently embraced by Benton County's judiciary, for forcefully drawing blood from those suspected of driving while intoxicated. They do it by getting a judge to sign off on a search warrant after the person suspected of DWI has refused to voluntarily provide blood.
Courts, and public opinion, have often supported the concept that one's body represents the most sacrosanct of vessels in a nation founded on the principals of individual liberty. In Arkansas, the balance between public safety regarding DWIs and individual privacy has been aided by what's called the "implied consent" law. The law says a person who operates a motor vehicle on public roads is deemed to have given consent "to one or more chemical tests of his or her blood, breath, or urine for the purpose of determining the alcohol or controlled substance content."
The implied consent law, however, flatly says if a person refuses such a test, "no chemical test shall be given." Refusing a test carries serious penalties: suspension of a driver's license for 180 days on the first refusal, two years for the second, three years for the third and lifetime revocation for the fourth. And law enforcement has, even in such cases, often been able to prove guilt in DWI cases, stacking those penalties on top of the implied consent punishment.
Rogers' city attorney tells his officers not to seek "blood" warrants. Most other agencies don't use them because of the legal concerns. It's unfortunate one agency feels empowered to set aside such concerns.
"I think anything we can do to help get drunk drivers off the road and keep them off the road and prosecute the ones who do is important," the story quoted Sgt. Lynn Hahn, who oversees Benton County's DWI task force.
See, it's for the public good, and that's good enough reason for government intrusion.
It doesn't take a constitutional scholar or a lawyer to have some sense of what's right and wrong regarding individual freedom and protection from government intrusion. The very image of an American being held down while a government agent draws blood to use against them is scary. The fact that it's being done by unilateral decision of a local sheriff and a circuit judge willing to sign off on such intrusion doesn't provide much comfort.
This isn't Panem, after all.
Commentary on 06/12/2014