Under Florida law, a police officer can take a blood sample from a suspected drunk driver if they have probable cause to believe the driver caused a serious injury or death. “Serious bodily injury” is defined as an injury that creates a substantial risk of death, disfigurement, or impairment of bodily functions. A court case called Gerlitz v. State established that a forced blood draw is appropriate in cases where the injury is obviously serious, like a broken back. But it can be less clear for injuries that are not as severe. In 1985, a football player injured another player so badly that it ended his career. In 2001, a woman crashed her car into a tree and got serious injuries. Though both incidents caused serious harm, a court said the football player’s injury was serious, but the woman’s injuries weren’t. A woman got into a car accident and the police officer thought she was drunk. He took her blood to test for alcohol, but she said the tests were wrong. The court decided the officer shouldn’t have taken her blood because her injuries weren’t serious enough. In the Galgano case, the court said that a broken leg with a five-percent permanent impairment may not always be considered a serious injury under the law. It depends on how severe the injury is and how it affects the person. For example, a compound fracture like Joe Theismann’s could be a serious injury, but a broken ankle like Donovan McNabb’s may not be. The court made a mistake by using the Galgano case as a basis for their decision because the injuries were different in severity. Before the decision in Schreiber, there were cases in other states where a compound fracture, like a severely broken ankle, was considered a serious bodily injury. However, in the Schreiber case, the court ruled that two fractured ankles did not count as serious bodily injuries because the person fully recovered.
According to Florida law, a police officer can get a blood sample from a suspect involved in a crash, even if nobody was seriously hurt. In the case of State v. Catt, the police ordered a blood draw after the defendant’s toddler daughter was ejected from the car and the EMTs were concerned about her injuries, even though she was later airlifted to the hospital. The court reversed a decision to suppress the results of a blood test taken from a driver who caused a car accident. The court said that the officers had probable cause to believe the driver caused serious bodily injury because the child in the car was ejected and airlifted to a hospital. The law allows officers to force a blood draw if they have probable cause to believe the driver caused serious bodily injury, even if nobody actually dies or is seriously injured. So, when deciding if a forced blood draw was justified, focus on the facts known to the officers at the time of the blood draw, not what happened later.
Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/is-that-a-serious-bodily-injury-analysis-of-forced-blood-draws-under-f-s-316-19331/
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