Don’t call the School of Government next week. We’ll all be out. Next week is conference-time for many of the court officials we serve, and we will be traversing the state (driving the speed limit at all times, of course) to speak at various legal conferences. Case updates are a perennial staple of these conference agendas, so I’ve been reviewing last year’s cases with a particular focus on impaired driving. A number of opinions address issues that are frequently litigated in DWI cases, so I thought I’d share the highlights with you in a two-part post. This post reviews the past year’s jurisprudence on implied consent testing and compelled blood draws. Tomorrow’s post will review the recent case law on reasonable suspicion and probable cause for DWI. Let’s start with a rule we all know: A certified chemical analyst must advise a defendant of his or her implied consent rights under G.S. 20-16.2 before carrying out testing under the implied consent statutes. When a defendant is not so advised, the results of the ensuing test may be suppressed. A chemical analyst may ask a defendant may to submit to more than one type of test, but if she does so, she must readvise the defendant of the implied consent rights before each request for a new kind of chemical analysis. The court re-affirmed these long-understood principles in State v. Williams, ___ N.C. App. ___, 759 S.E.2d 350 (June 17, 2014). The defendant in Williams was advised of his implied consent rights and subsequently [...]
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