High court gives police more leeway in DWI cases

DUI Checkpoints Yield Arrests in California
A man is give a sobriety test at a sobriety checkpoint.
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(AP) - Minnesota law enforcement officers have more power to order blood tests without a warrant in cases where a suspected drunken driver kills or seriously injures someone else.

By a 5-2 ruling Friday, the state Supreme Court reversed previous decisions that supressed blood-alcohol evidence obtained from a woman without permission soon after she was involved in 2006 head-on collision in Burnsville.

The majority held that waiting for a warrant could have caused key evidence against the woman to disappear because alcohol levels can drop as time elapses. She faces seven criminal charges, including several felonies.

Justice Christopher Dietzen says an officer's finding that there was probable cause of alcohol impairment was enough to justify the blood draw done at a hospital within 45 minutes of the crash.

In her dissent, Justice Helen Meyer warns that the ruling "erodes the right of citizens in Minnesota to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures."

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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