Georgia Supreme Court curtails the ability of police to collect evidence of drug and alcohol use by drivers involved in serious auto accidents

26 Apr 2005, credit to Bill Rankin of the AJC:

The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday curtailed the ability of police to collect evidence of drug and alcohol use by drivers involved in serious auto accidents.
In a unanimous ruling, the court held that once a driver declines to give a blood and urine sample under the state's "implied consent" law, police cannot obtain a search warrant to force the driver to submit to the test.

"The statute plainly requires that if an individual does not consent to the designated chemical test, then no test is to be administered," Justice Harris Hines wrote for a unanimous court.

Under the implied consent law, people who refuse to give a blood or urine sample can have their driver's licenses suspended for a year. Their refusal to take the test also can be used as evidence against them at trial.

But these penalties "do not include being compelled to submit to testing through the use of a search warrant," Hines wrote. "Otherwise, the right of refusal under the implied consent law would be rendered meaningless."

The ruling threw out two vehicular homicide convictions — and a 28-year prison sentence — against a Carroll County man accused of running a stop light and killing Inez Billingsley, 54, and her six-year-old grandson, Angelo Sykes. Billingsley was driving Angelo to school on the morning of Sept. 13, 1999. The defendant, Steven William Collier, 34, tested positive for amphetamine and methamphetamine.