State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A18-0255

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Isaac Thomas Soltau,
Appellant.

Filed December 31, 2018
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Olmsted County District Court
File No. 55-CR-15-8373

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Mark A. Ostrem, Olmsted County Attorney, Jennifer D. Plante, Assistant County Attorney,
Rochester, Minnesota (for respondent)

James McGeeney, Doda & McGeeney, P.A., Rochester, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Johnson, Judge; and Smith,
Tracy M., Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
ROSS, Judge
Isaac Soltau crashed his car into a curb after a night of heavy drinking, causing it to
flip and eject a passenger through the rear window. Paramedics took Soltau to a hospital,
where a police officer drew a blood sample. More than two years passed before prosecutors
2
filed charges against Soltau for impaired driving. Soltau unsuccessfully moved to dismiss
the charges for unnecessary pre-charge delay and to suppress the blood-draw evidence
obtained without a warrant. Answering this appeal from his conviction, we hold that the
district court acted within its discretion by refusing to dismiss the charges on delay grounds
and that the exigent -circumstances exception to the warrant requirement justified the
warrantless blood draw. We therefore affirm.
FACTS
Isaac Soltau drank at least six vodka Red Bulls before leaving the bar after 2:00 a.m.
and driving his car into a curb. The impact caused the car to flip and eject one of Soltau’s
passengers through the rear window. Soltau admitted to Rochester Police Sergeant
Timothy Lutzke that he “had too much to drink.” Paramedics took Soltau and the two
passengers to the hospital.
Sergeant Lutzke wanted to obtain a warrant to draw a sample of Soltau’s blood to
test it for alcohol concentration. The sergeant completed an affidavit and warrant
application. He conferred with an assistant Olmsted c ounty attorney about it. He then
sought a judge to issue a warrant.
Meanwhile, Officer Kenneth Gallion went to the hospital where Soltau was being
treated, and he awaited word about the warrant. Hospital staff eventually told Officer
Gallion that he had only “a small window of opportunity” to draw Soltau’s blood before
nurses moved him to the operating room. Officer Gallion knew that Sergeant Lutzke was
attempting to obtain a warrant, but, believing it was imperative to draw the blood sample
3
before Soltau became unavailable, he drew Soltau’s blood before nurses removed him for
surgery. It was 4:40 a.m. A judge signed the search warrant five minutes later.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension tested Soltau’s blood three times, revealing
blood-alcohol concentrations of .11, .104, and .10. For reasons unclear from the record,
the state did not immediately charge Soltau with any crime. Sixteen months after the crash,
the police department assigned the case to Investigator Chris Weber, who later speculated
that the case had “fallen through the cracks.”
Another eight months passed. Then Weber drafted a search warrant for all the crash
victims’ medical records. Eventually, more than two years after the crash, the state charged
Soltau with four counts of criminal vehicular operation causing substantial bodily harm—
two for operating a car negligently under the influence of alcohol and two for having a
blood-alcohol concentration of .08 or more within two hours after driving—and with two
counts of driving while impaired.
Soltau filed a three-request motion. He asked the district court to dismiss the
complaint because of the state’s unnecessary pre-charge delay. He asked the court to
suppress evidence obtained as a result of the warrantless blood draw. And he asked the
court to forbid the state from introducing the blood-test results because the physical
evidence was destroyed and unavailable for him to test. Soltau supported his motion in part
with the affidavit of a crash-reconstruction expert, who testified that he could not analyze
whether Soltau had been driving the car because the vehicle had not been preserved as
evidence.
4
The district court denied Soltau’s motion, concluding that he was not prejudiced by
the charging delay and that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless blood draw.
Soltau proceeded to a stipulated-evidence trial, after which the district court found him
guilty on all counts and convicted him of two of the criminal-vehicular-operation offenses.
Soltau appeals.
D E C I S I O N
Soltau offers two arguments on appeal. He argues first that the district court abused
its discretion by denying his motion under Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 30.02 to
dismiss the state’s charges against him after a n unnecessary delay. He argues second that
the district court erred by f inding that an exigency justified the warrantless draw of his
blood. Neither argument compels reversal.
I
Soltau maintains that the district court should have dismissed the state’s criminal
complaint against him under Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 30.02 because of the
prosecutor’s unnecessary delay in charging him. We review the district court’s decision to
deny a motion to dismiss for an abuse of discretion. State v. Banks, 875 N.W.2d 338, 344
(Minn. App. 2016), review denied (Minn. Sept. 28, 2016). Rule 30.02 provides that “[t]he
court may dismiss the complaint . . . if the prosecutor has unnecessarily delayed bringing
the defendant to trial.” In addition to the unnecessary-delay element, a challenger must also
establish that the delay prejudiced him. Banks , 875 N.W.2d at 341. The state does not
dispute that the prosecutor’s 27-month delay in charging Soltau was unnecessary , so we
turn to whether the delay prejudiced him.
5
Soltau has not established that the state’s pre-charge delay prejudiced him. A
defendant can show prejudice by demonstrating that he was incarcerated during the
pre-charge delay, that he experienced anxiety over the possibility of potential charges, and
that his defense would be impaired by the delay. See Banks, 875 N.W.2d at 346. The district
court found that Soltau suffered no prejudice in any of these forms, and the record gives us
no reason to disturb the findings. Soltau spent only a single day in jail related to the offense
after he failed to appear. He offered no evidence that he experienced anxiety over the
lingering potential charges. And according to the district court’s undisputed findings, the
car was destroyed only after its owner, Soltau’s father, transferred it to his insurer following
the accident. Although the state did dispose of the blood sample, we cannot conclude that
this prejudiced Soltau’s defense against the alcohol-based charges. Soltau admitted that he
drank too much before driving and crashing the car, and he gives us no reason to doubt the
accuracy or reliability of the three tests performed by the BCA, each of which showed a
legally excessive blood-alcohol concentration. The district court did not abuse its discretion
by concluding that the state’s unnecessary pre -charge delay did not prejudice Soltau and,
consequently, by refusing to dismiss the criminal complaint under Rule 30.02.
II
Soltau maintains next that the officer’s warrantless blood draw violated his Fourth
Amendment rights. We review de novo the district court’s conclusion that n o Fourth
Amendment violation occurred. State v. Stavish, 868 N.W.2d 670, 677 (Minn. 2015).
The district court held that the exigent- circumstances exception to the Fourth
Amendment’s warrant requirement justified Officer Gallion in drawing the blood sample
6
before the district court issued a search warrant. The exigent-circumstances exception
applies in a drunk-driving case if a reasonable officer would have concluded that he faced
an urgency “in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant would significantly
undermine the efficacy of the search.” Stavish, 868 N.W.2d at 676–77. When Officer
Gallion decided to draw Soltau’s blood at 4:40 a.m., he knew that Soltau had lost control
of his car and flipped it at about 2:45 a.m., that Soltau had declared that he had drunk too
much, that state law prohibits a person from having a blood-alcohol concentration of .08
or more within two hours of driving (see Minn. Stat. § 169A.20, subd. 1(5) (2016)), that
only six minutes remained before the two-hour statutory window under subdivision 1(5)
would be closed, and that hospital staff was about to wheel Soltau away for surgery.
Because Soltau’s blood-alcohol concentration at that moment was integral to whether he
had committed a crime, a reasonable officer would conclude, as Officer Gallion concluded,
that delaying any longer would significantly undermine the efficacy of the search. The
warrantless blood draw was therefore reasonable and did not violate Soltau’s Fourth
Amendment rights.
Affirmed.