The Booking Questions

In the early hours of 30 November 1986, a patrol officer came across a car stopped on the shoulder of a Pennsylvania highway with its lights on and its engine running. The Defendant was behind the wheel. The officer could smell alcohol on his breath, and noticed that his eyes were glazed and bloodshot and his face was flushed. Told to stay where he was while the officer went back to the patrol car, the Defendant instead pulled away. The officer caught up with him a short distance on and put him through three roadside sobriety tests: following a moving object with his eyes, walking heel to toe along a line and turning, and standing on one leg. He performed poorly on all three and admitted he had been drinking.

He was taken to the county booking centre, a facility set up to process drink-driving arrests, where a camera recorded everything that followed. He was not warned of his right to remain silent. An officer put the standard booking questions to him — name, address, height, weight, eye colour, date of birth, current age — and he stumbled over his address and his age. The officer then asked him whether he knew the date of his sixth birthday. He said he did not. He was asked to perform the three sobriety tests again on camera, and made further remarks as he struggled through them. Finally an officer explained the state's implied consent law and asked him to take a breath test; he asked a number of questions about what would happen to him, and refused. Only after all of that was he told of his right to silence.