Judge's Arrest Goes to State's Highest Court

No blood samples in St. Lucie's judge's DUI arrest thanks to court ruling
The Treasure Coast Palm by Elliott Jones  -  October 27, 2011

VERO BEACH, FL — St. Lucie County Judge Kathryn Nelson could have been forced to give blood for DUI testing if she had been arrested here in late 2009.  At the time Vero Beach Police was one of the law enforcement agencies in Florida using court-approved search warrants to take blood samples in cases in which defendants refused to undergo alcohol testing.  On Tuesday evening Nelson, 52, was charged with DUI while driving on State Road 60 at the Merrill P. Barber Bridge. According to a police report, her eyes appeared glassy and bloodshot. Her breath smelled of alcohol. On her skirt was a material that looked like vomit, according to reports.  Nelson refused to get out of her vehicle. One police officer pulled her fingers off the steering wheel and two others removed her from the car, police said.  She declined both field sobriety tests and a blood-alcohol test, said Police Chief Donald Dappen.  But police no longer use warrants to take blood samples, Dappen said, because Florida's 5th District Court of Appeal, in Daytona Beach, in May ruled that blood can't be seized as evidence of committing a crime, court records show.  The ruling is on appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. And until the Supreme Court rules, Dappen said his agency will not get search warrants to locally combat the problem of people refusing a breath test when stopped on suspicion of driving drunk.  The police's use of search warrants was backed by the State Attorney's Office. And, "We will support them again if they become legal (through a Supreme Court ruling)," said Assistant State Attorney Chris Taylor.  Taylor declined to comment on particular DUI cases, including Nelson.  State Attorney Bruce Colton is asking Gov. Rick Scott's office to assign her case to another judicial circuit. Before being appointed a judge in 2005, Nelson spent 15 years as an assistant state attorney with Colton's office.