Beylund v. Levi, 2017 ND 30

Beylund and Wojahn were arrested for DUI, read North Dakota’s implied-consent advisory, and submitted to warrantless blood tests that showed BAC over the legal limit.
The U.S. Supreme Court decided Birchfield v. North Dakota, holding warrantless breath tests permissible incident to arrest but warrantless blood tests generally are not; it remanded Beylund’s administrative-suspension case to reconsider voluntariness of consent given the advisory’s partial inaccuracy.
On remand the state court consolidated Beylund and Wojahn and asked (1) which forum should decide voluntariness and (2) whether, if consent was involuntary, the blood-test results must be suppressed in an administrative license-suspension proceeding.
For purposes of these appeals the court assumed consent was involuntary and addressed only whether the exclusionary rule requires suppression in the administrative proceedings.
The court concluded that the federal exclusionary rule does not require suppression of blood-test results in civil administrative license-suspension hearings and affirmed the suspensions.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether voluntariness findings should be made on remand and by which forum	Beylund/Wojahn: Birchfield establishes consent coerced where consent secured "on pain" of criminal sanction; voluntariness should be scrutinized and, if involuntary, remedy follow	Dept: Administrative hearing (and appellate review) can address voluntariness but even if involuntary, administrative proceedings may still admit the test results	Court assumed consent involuntary for purposes of decision but treated voluntariness as a factual issue for the administrative/district court review process under existing procedures
If consent is involuntary, must blood-test results be suppressed in administrative license-suspension proceedings?	Beylund/Wojahn: Exclusionary rule and state statutes require suppression; implied-consent threat is an unconstitutional condition and denies due process	Dept: Exclusionary rule does not apply to civil administrative proceedings (Scott, Holte); alternatively, good-faith exceptions (Davis/Leon) apply	Held: Exclusionary rule does not require suppression in these civil administrative proceedings; results admissible and suspensions affirmed

Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S. Ct. 2160 (U.S. 2016) (warrantless breath tests permissible incident to arrest; warrantless blood tests generally require a warrant; remand to reassess voluntariness of consent)
Pennsylvania Bd. of Probation & Parole v. Scott, 524 U.S. 357 (U.S. 1998) (federal exclusionary rule need not be applied in administrative parole revocation proceedings)
United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (U.S. 1984) (exclusionary rule is a judicially created deterrent remedy, not a personal constitutional right)
Davis v. United States, 564 U.S. 229 (U.S. 2011) (good-faith exception to exclusionary rule when officers rely on binding precedent later overruled)
Holte v. N.D. State Highway Comm’r, 436 N.W.2d 250 (N.D. 1989) (North Dakota precedent holding exclusionary rule inapplicable to administrative license-suspension proceedings)