Ammons v. State

Mia Ammons was pulled over in Paulding County and charged with driving under the influence after refusing a preliminary breath test, refusing some field sobriety tests, and refusing to consent to a blood test without a warrant. She argued that using her refusals against her at trial would violate her right against self-incrimination under the Georgia Constitution, and separately argued that letting prosecutors use her blood test refusal violated a constitutional clause requiring the legislature to protect citizens' rights. The trial court denied her request to keep this evidence out, relying partly on an old 1993 case called Keenan. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed in part: it overruled Keenan and held that the state constitution protects suspects from having their refusal to take a breath test or cooperate with field sobriety tests used against them, because those tests require an affirmative act. However, the court rejected her separate argument about the blood test refusal, finding she had not proven her broader theory about the constitutional provision.

The Georgia Constitution's right against compelled self-incrimination protects a DUI suspect from having evidence of her refusal to take a preliminary breath test or cooperate with field sobriety tests used against her, because those tests require an affirmative act that generates incriminating evidence; but the Privileges and Immunities Clause does not bar using evidence of a refusal to consent to a blood test.

Georgia prosecutors can no longer introduce evidence that a DUI suspect refused a roadside breath test or field sobriety tests, which removes a common piece of evidence used to prove impairment. Drivers gain a clearer constitutional protection, while blood test refusals can still be used against them.

Affirmed in part and reversed in part

1. The court explained that Paragraph XVI of the Georgia Constitution, the state's self-incrimination protection, has been interpreted in prior cases (Olevik, Elliott, and Awad) to cover not just spoken testimony but also compelled physical acts that generate incriminating evidence, such as blowing into a breath test device or providing a urine sample.
2. Applying that rule, the court found no meaningful difference between the preliminary alco-sensor breath test Ammons refused and the chemical breath and urine tests already covered by those precedents, since both require the suspect to affirmatively blow into a device to generate evidence against herself.
3. The court then applied the same reasoning to field sobriety tests like the walk-and-turn and one-leg-stand tests, finding that because these require the suspect's active cooperation to perform specific physical maneuvers, refusing them is also protected, and using that refusal as evidence would violate the self-incrimination right.
4. Using the stare decisis test, which asks courts to weigh a precedent's age, reliance interests, workability, and soundness of reasoning before overturning it, the court concluded that its old Keenan decision was unsound because it never actually analyzed the Georgia Constitution's text, so it could be overruled despite its age.
5. On the separate blood test refusal claim, the court held that Ammons had not met her heavy burden to show that the Privileges and Immunities Clause, which requires the legislature to protect citizens' rights, adds extra protection beyond the specific rights already listed in the Constitution, so her challenge to the implied consent statutes failed.

• DUI
• field sobriety tests
• self-incrimination
• breath test refusal
• blood test refusal