Douds v. Texas (original by judge alcala)
Annotate this CaseDefendant-appellant Kenneth Douds was arrested for drunk driving. He challenged the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress blood-specimen evidence that was admitted at trial. He asserted both that: (1) the statutory requirements for a mandatory blood draw had not been met; and (2) the mandatory-blood-draw statute, as applied to him, had resulted in a warrantless seizure of his blood in violation of the Fourth Amendment. After the close of evidence, the trial court heard arguments and requested briefing from the parties. Appellant expressly told the trial court that he was limiting a second motion to a complaint about the admission of his oral statements. The issue this case presented for the Court of Criminal Appeals' review was whether isolated statements globally asserting that a blood draw was conducted without a warrant enough to apprise the trial court that it had to consider whether there were exigent circumstances to permit a warrantless search in a driving while intoxicated case, when the context of the entire record in a motion to suppress referred to a different complaint. The Court concluded that the answer to this question is “no.” Because this record showed that appellant failed to preserve his complaint that the search was conducted in the absence of exigent circumstances or some other valid exception to the warrant requirement, the Court affirmed the State’s first ground in its petition for discretionary review that the court of appeals erred by reversing appellant's conviction.
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