DUI Law - Indiana Driver Fights Forced Catheterization

In Lockard v. City of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, Slip Copy, 2011 WL 3902796 (S.D.Ind.) the defendant sued the City for alleging violating his civil rights when they forced a catheterization even after the defendant had submitted to a blood draw. At approximately 10:40 p.m. on March 13, 2009, Officer Miller pulled over Mr. Lockard after observing him driving at a high rate of speed and failing to stop at two stop signs. While speaking with Mr. Lockard, Officer Miller detected an odor of alcohol and observed physiological signs of intoxication, such as bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. Officer Miller began an OWI investigation, performing a series of field sobriety tests, which Mr. Lockard failed, and administering a portable breath test, which registered a reading of 0.07%. Officer Miller then asked Mr. Lockard to submit to a chemical test after advising him of Indiana's Implied Consent Law, but Mr. Lockard refused. Accordingly, Officer Miller arrested Mr. Lockard and applied for a search warrant. A search warrant was issued on March 14, 2009, at 12:10 a.m. by Magistrate Kimberly Schmaltz of the Dearborn Superior Court.

The warrant provided: “You are hereby authorized and ordered, in the name of the State of Indiana with the necessary and proper assistance to obtain and remove a blood and urine sample from Jamie N. Lockard.” (emphasis added). The warrant goes on to say that Officer Miller was “ordered to seize such sample, obtained on such search, and forward such samples for immediate analysis.” Officer Miller requested both blood and urine samples in the warrant application, in part, because he had been trained that both should be obtained.

At roughly 1:35 a.m., Officer Miller and Officer Lanning took Mr. Lockard to bed number nine in the Emergency Department; the curtains were pulled around the bed to protect Mr. Lockard's privacy; Officer Miller handcuffed Mr. Lockard to the bed; and Officer Miller and Officer Lanning grabbed Mr. Lockard's ankles in order to restrain him “so he wouldn't kick any of the nurses.” Officer Miller testified that during this time, Mr. Lockard was actively resisting the procedure. When asked if he complied with the catheterization, Mr. Lockard testified that he was “forced into complying.” Mr. Lockard told Nurse Walston that he did not want to be catheterized. Nonetheless, Nurse Walston pulled down Mr. Lockard's pants, exposing his genitalia, and prepared a sterile field by putting on sterile gloves and cleansing Mr. Lockard's penis with Betadine.


Nurse Walston subsequently prepared a straight size 16 Foley catheter for insertion by applying lubrication to the catheter. She then attempted to catheterize Mr. Lockard by beginning to insert the Foley catheter into his penis. Around this time, Mr. Lockard informed Nurse Walston that he had an enlarged prostrate. For this reason (and because she was perceiving a lack of cooperation on Mr. Lockard's part), Nurse Walston removed the Foley catheter and began preparing a Coude catheter, which is smaller and can pass through an enlarged prostrate. The procedure with the Coude catheter was completed and a urine specimen was obtained in roughly two minutes. Mr. Lockard claims that he suffered considerable pain during the procedure, describing it as “[j]ust as if somebody would take a burning hot coal and stick it up your penis” and “worse than a toochache.” Mr. Lockard was not examined following the catheterization, and he was discharged from the Dearborn County Hospital shortly after 2:00 a.m., into the custody of the Lawrenceburg police.


Mr. Lockard was taken to jail and charged with OWI, OWI Refusal, and Obstruction of Justice for refusing to consent or cooperate in the catheterization.FN5 While at jail, Mr. Lockard noticed that his urine was “cloudy.” Roughly one week after the incident, on March 20, 2009, Mr. Lockard visited Dr. Lynn Eiler for problems related to burning urination. Dr. Eiler prescribed Mr. Lockard antibiotics, which apparently cured the burning. However, Mr. Lockard's urinalysis was negative for infection. On June 15, 2009, Mr. Lockard again sought treatment for urination problems, this time with Dr. Samantha Wood. Dr. Wood referred Mr. Lockard to Mr. Michael Maggio, who, on July 6, 2009, noted that Mr. Lockard's prostate “was tender consistent with clinical prostatis.” That said, it is worth noting that Dr. Michael Koch, a physician hired by defense counsel, has reviewed the relevant evidence and opined that the catheterization at issue was “atraumatic and no urologic injury occurred to [Mr. Lockard].”


On April 3, 2009, the Indiana State Department of Toxicology received Mr. Lockard's blood and urine specimens for testing purposes. Weeks later, on April 20, 2009, Mr. Lockard entered into a plea agreement, in which he pleaded guilty to reckless driving and received a 180 day suspended sentence, 180 days of probation, a $100 .00 fine, and was assessed $165.00 in court costs. On June 23, 2009, the Department of Toxicology reported that Mr. Lockard's blood ethanol level was 54 mg/dl (or 0.05%) and his urine ethanol level was 85 mg/dl (or 0.08%). On July 6, 2009, the Department of Toxicology reported that Mr. Lockard's blood tested positive for benzodiazepines, opiates, marijuana, oxycodone, opiods, and MDMA (i.e.ecstacy). Mr. Lockard's urine tested positive for benzodiazepines, opiates, marijuana, oxycodone, and hydromorphine/hydrocodone. At his deposition, Mr. Lockard described these results as “bogus,” “trumped up,” and “fantasy land.”

Importantly, the warrant provides: “You are hereby authorized and ordered, in the name of the State of Indiana with the necessary and proper assistance to obtain and remove a blood and urine sample from Jamie N. Lockard.” (emphasis added). The warrant goes on to say that Officer Miller was “ordered to seize such sample, obtained on such search, and forward such samples for immediate analysis.” Officer Miller requested both blood and urine samples in the warrant application, in part, because he had been trained that both should be obtained.

Specifically, in November 2008, Officer Miller attended a recertification continuing education course at which Dr. Wagner, the head of the Department of Toxicology at Indiana University, told the officer that Indiana University Department of Toxicology needed samples of both urine and blood specimens when completing toxicology kits. On this point, Officer Miller testified that the Department of Toxicology does “preliminary testing on the urine to have an idea what to test for in the blood ... [t]hat way they don't use the blood sample just running queries to see what may test positive in it.” FN1 Moreover, the state kit from the Department of Toxicology contained vials for both blood and urine. Finally, Officer Miller testified that because the warrant required both blood and urine samples, he felt obligated to obtain both, stating that “[i]t's an order from the judge ... I'm complying with the judge's order.”



The District Court in considering the defendant's Motions to Dismiss discussed the law applicable:

"There are two leading Supreme Court cases addressing whether the state's intrusion into a criminal suspect's body constituted a Fourth Amendment violation. First, in Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966), the Supreme Court held that the police did not violate the Fourth/Fourteenth Amendments when, with probable cause but without a warrant, they had a physician extract blood from a person suspected of drunk driving who had declined a breathalyzer test and objected to a blood test. Id. at 772.

"Of course, not all intrusions into a suspect's body are permissible under the Fourth Amendment. This point was driven home in Winston v. Lee, 470 U.S. 753, 105 S.Ct. 1611, 84 L.Ed.2d 662 (1985), where the Supreme Court ruled that the State of Virginia could not compel a criminal suspect to undergo a surgical procedure to remove a bullet lodged in his chest, even though the bullet would have been helpful to the state in prosecuting the suspect for attempted robbery. Id. at 767. To that end, Winston emphasized that “a search for evidence of a crime may be unjustifiable if it endangers the life or health of the suspect.” Id. at 761. Moreover, Winston applied the Schmerber balancing test, which weighs the following factors: (1) the extent to which the procedure may threaten the safety or health of the individual; (2) the extent of intrusion upon the individual's dignitary interests in personal privacy and bodily integrity; and (3) the community's interest in fairly and accurately determining guilt or innocence. Id. at 761–63.FN8 One upshot of Winston is that the “reasonableness of surgical intrusions beneath the skin depends on a case-bycase approach, in which the individual's interests in privacy and security are weighed against society's interests in conducting the procedure.” Id. at 760.

"Clearly, in terms of intrusiveness, a case like Mr. Lockard's—involving forced catheterization—falls in between Schmerber and Winston. In fact, the Seventh Circuit has expressly recognized that removing urine through the placement of a catheter is not as intrusive as the removal of a bullet, but that it is worse than a blood draw. See Sparks v. Stutler, 71 F.3d 259, 261 (7th Cir.1995) (“A catheter is more intrusive than a needle but less intrusive than a scalpel, making it hard to classify the procedure under an objective reasonableness inquiry.”). Further, at the time of the incident—March 13 and14, 2009—the Seventh Circuit had addressed forced catheterizations in the context of § 1983 on two occasions."

In granting the defendant's Motions to Dismiss, the District Court found several cases holding that forced catheterizations are not an unreasonable procedure for gathering evidence (see opinion below). As such, the court found that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity and dismissed the case:

"Beginning with the first method of showing the existence of a “clearly established” right, the Court simply cannot find that, at the time of Mr. Lockard's catheterization, a closely analogous case established that any of the individual Defendants' conduct was unconstitutional. To the contrary, Seventh Circuit precedent is clear that an involuntary catheterization does not automatically violate the Fourth Amendment as a matter of law, even in the absence of a warrant. See Sparks, 71 F.3d 648. Significantly, here, the warrant required the removal of both blood and urine samples."

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DUI Appeal - Idaho Denies Suit After Forced Catheterization

In Miller v. Idaho State Patrol, --- P.3d ----, 2011 WL 1881954 (Idaho) the officers performed a forced catheterization of the plaintiff for a drug test of her urine. The facts of the underlying case were reported as follows:

"In May of 2007, a trooper with the Idaho State Police was driving by a gas station in Priest River, Idaho, when he saw Jason Miller, Respondent, staggering around as he entered his car. The officer contacted Idaho State Trooper Christopher Yount, who arrived to see Miller sitting in the driver's seat of his car. Yount observed that Miller's pupils were dilated and requested that he perform some field sobriety tests, which Miller failed.

Yount put Miller under arrest for DUI, after which Yount discovered scissors in Miller's pocket that he used for cleaning a marijuana pipe. Miller also admitted to smoking marijuana “every day.” Yount took Miller to a hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, for a urine test. At the hospital, Miller refused to provide a urine sample, saying “I will not fight you, but I will not give you a sample voluntarily.” A registered nurse at the hospital then catheterized Miller at Yount's request and extracted a urine sample. Afterward, Yount found a pipe in Miller's shirt pocket containing methamphetamine residue. Yount also administered a drug-recognition evaluation on Miller at the jail that indicated Miller was under the influence of marijuana and a central-nervous-system stimulant. Miller later pled guilty to felony possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia, and misdemeanor DUI.

There is no indication that Miller struggled while the hospital nurse inserted the catheter. The record is silent as to how or where the nurse extracted the sample or who was present in the room. There is nothing in the record to indicate whether the urine sample tested positive for any controlled substances. It is also unclear why Yount chose to have Miller catheterized rather than performing a blood draw."

Miller eventually sued the police for a violation of her civil rights. The court first acknowledged that suspicionless forced catheterizations are undoubtedly illegal:

"Even though courts nationwide have not had many opportunities to address forced catheterizations, there are some areas where cases appear to be coalescing into universal rules. For instance, it is objectively well-established that a suspicionless catheterization, like any suspicionless bodily search, would be unconstitutional. Ellis v. City of San Diego, 176 F.3d 1183, 1192 (9th Cir.1999); Ohio v. Funk, 177 Ohio App.3d 814, 896 N.E.2d 203, 207–08 (Ohio Ct.App.2008); see also Hammer v. Gross, 932 F.2d 842, 844 (9th Cir.1991) (stating that a warrantless blood draw requires probable cause). If the police have probable cause to search for something that is not likely to dissipate from the body, then a warrantless search for bodily fluids would be unconstitutional. See Barlow v. Ground, 943 F.2d 1132, 1138 (9th Cir.1991) (discussing blood draws); Graves v. Beto, 424 F.2d 524, 525 (5th Cir.1970) (similar). On the other hand, a forced catheterization performed on arrestees solely for medical screening or treatment, and not for investigatory reasons, is constitutional. Sullivan v. Bornemann, 384 F.3d 372, 377 (2004) (addressing catheterizations done by hospital personnel for medical clearance before accepting a suspect into county jail); Meyer v. Woodward, 617 F.Supp.2d 554, 565 (E.D.Mich.2008); Tinius v. Carroll Cnty. Sheriff Dep't, 321 F.Supp.2d 1064, 1075–76 (N.D.Iowa 2004) (upholding a catheterization performed by hospital personnel on a person detained under the police community-caretaking function); see also United States v. Attson, 900 F.2d 1427, 1433 (9th Cir.1990) (stating that a blood draw performed by medical personnel for purely medical reasons was permissible).

Idaho also acknowledged that blood draws and catheterizations are qualitatively different:

"[B]lood draws and catheterizations also have significant differences[:]

"First, catheters impinge on a person's dignity much more severely than a blood draw. “[T]he forceful use of a catheter is a ‘gross personal indignity’ far exceeding that involved in a simple blood test.” Ellis, 176 F.3d at 1192 (quoting Yanez v. Romero, 619 F.2d 851, 855 (10th Cir.1980)). A person being catheterized must pull his or her pants down to expose the genitalia, potentially in front of members of the opposite sex, and allow a stranger to handle very private parts of his or her body, not for consensual medical treatment, but at the behest of the State. See Hooper v. Pearson, No. 2:08–CV–871, 2010 WL 2990809, at *5 (D.Utah 2010) (describing how male officers restrained a female suspect while two women pulled her pants down and catheterized her). Blood draws, by contrast, occur not just in private doctors' offices but also at public blood drives. They typically do not require the person being tested to remove sensitive articles of clothing or otherwise be subjected to private or embarrassing activity.

Second, catheters involve a significantly greater amount of physical trauma. Unlike a needle, which punctures the skin to reach a blood vessel just below the surface, a catheter is a tube that must pass all the way through the urethra and enter the bladder. Even though catheterization is fairly commonplace, it can certainly hurt more than inserting a small needle into the arm. See LeVine v. Roebuck, 550 F.3d 684, 689 (8th Cir.2008) (noting that catheterization is a painful procedure). A catheter may also carry a greater risk of infecting the recipient. See Go Med. Indus. Pty., Ltd. v. Inmed Corp., 471 F.3d 1264, 1267 (Fed.Cir.2006) (“Urinary catheters typically increase the risk of urinary tract infections because inserting a catheter can push bacteria into the normally sterile bladder.”). It would be reasonable for many people to experience anxiety while enduring such an experience.
According to federal caselaw, such a lawsuit cannot stand unless the law was clear and settled that such a process was in fact illegal. The Supreme Court of Idaho, seizing on that principle, dismissed the plaintiff's claim against the police, noting that the law on the subject was unsettled. In so writing, the court mentioned several out of state cases previously deciding similar issues:

"The New Jersey Superior Court refused to grant § 1983 immunity to two police officers who catheterized a DUI suspect after taking a blood draw, holding instead that a factual issue existed as to whether any exigent circumstances justified the procedure. Jiosi v. Township of Nutley, 332 N.J.Super. 169, 753 A.2d 132, 140 (N.J.Super.Ct.App.Div.2000). Similarly, in a § 1983 case decided after the events in this case, a federal district court found that a forced catheterization, if proven, would be impermissible even though the police had obtained a warrant to extract bodily fluids because the test is so intrusive and a blood draw had already been performed. Elliott v. Sheriff of Rush Cnty., 686 F.Supp.2d 840, 859–60 (S.D.Ind.2010). The court further held that the case fell in the “obvious” category of well-established law, preventing the officers from receiving qualified immunity under § 1983. Id. at 863; see also Elliott v. Rush Mem'l Hosp., 928 N.E.2d 634, 643–44 (Ind.Ct.App.2010) (finding no immunity under a state medical-malpractice statute for a hospital that forcibly catheterized a DUI suspect because there was a material fact issue as to whether catheterization was a reasonable medical procedure for obtaining a urine sample).

"Compare these cases with a different decision in which another federal district court upheld a forced, warrantless catheterization that was supported by probable cause. Ellis v. Cotten, No. 3:06–CV–283–K, 2008 WL 4182359, at *6 (N.D.Tex. Sep.9, 2008). The court held that the test was permissible under the Fourth Amendment despite the fact that the police simultaneously drew blood because probable cause existed. Id. The court there even stated that the involuntary catheterization was “remarkably similar” to the blood draw in Schmerber. Id. That this small but significant division of authority has continued to develop since the events in this case simply illustrates how difficult it would have been for Yount to know what his legal obligations were.

In dismissing the charges, the court concluded:

"Because American search-and-seizure law is undeveloped as to when an officer may administer an involuntary warrantless catheterization on a suspect, Officer Yount was entitled to qualified immunity for the § 1983 claim. Further, Yount did not act with malicious or criminal intent, so he was entitled to immunity from Miller's tort claims under the Idaho Tort Claims Act."

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