Background
On September 27, 2020, at 2:11 a.m., a Woodruff police officer stopped Arik Ulwelling’s 2016 Ford Explorer for operating without tail lamps lit. The officer detected signs of intoxication and arrested Ulwelling for operating while intoxicated (OWI). Ulwelling initially refused consent to a blood draw. The officer obtained a search warrant, and a hospital laboratory technician drew blood from Ulwelling at approximately 3:30 a.m., producing a result of 0.188 g/100 mL. Ulwelling was charged with OWI as a fourth offense.
Ulwelling filed a motion to suppress the blood test results, arguing the lab technician’s procedure violated Fourth Amendment protections because he made four attempted draws from the right arm and only changed the needle after the third attempt—contrary to hospital policy limiting draws to two attempts. Ulwelling also testified that the technician “probed” with the needle in his left arm, which he contended risked contamination and artificially elevated the BAC result.
After the circuit court denied suppression, Ulwelling pleaded no contest to OWI as a fourth offense and received probation. He then sought plea withdrawal, arguing his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to challenge the traffic stop’s legality under a statutory exemption for vehicles with automatic headlamps.
The Court’s Holding
The Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed both the denial of Ulwelling’s suppression motion and the denial of his plea withdrawal request. On the blood draw issue, the court assumed arguendo that the technician violated hospital procedures but held suppression was inappropriate because the exclusionary rule requires law enforcement misconduct. Here, Officer Czlapinski properly obtained a warrant and had a licensed, experienced phlebotomist perform the draw in a hospital setting. The court found that suppressing the evidence would provide no deterrent effect on law enforcement conduct since none had occurred. Ulwelling failed to show the procedure caused actual harm—no infection resulted and he did not prove the probing introduced arterial blood affecting the BAC reading.
On the ineffective assistance claim, the court examined Wisconsin Statutes § 347.06(1), which prohibits operating a vehicle during hours of darkness unless tail lamps are lit, but exempts vehicles with automatically activated headlamps meeting federal daytime running lamp standards. Ulwelling argued this meant his vehicle’s tail lamps never needed to be lit. The court found the interaction between § 347.06(1) and § 347.13(1)—which separately requires tail lamps to emit red warning light visible 500 feet behind—created ambiguity about when automatic-light vehicles must illuminate tail lamps. Because the law was “unsettled,” counsel was not required to raise a traffic stop challenge, and therefore was not ineffective.
Key Takeaways
- The exclusionary rule applies only to suppress evidence resulting from law enforcement misconduct, not medical personnel’s departure from hospital protocols in executing a lawful warrant.
- When statutory requirements are ambiguous or subject to reasonable interpretation, an officer’s mistaken reading of the law can be objectively reasonable, supporting a valid traffic stop.
- Trial counsel is not constitutionally ineffective for failing to raise arguments based on unsettled or ambiguous law, even if the argument might ultimately prevail.
- A defendant challenging a blood draw on Fourth Amendment grounds must prove both procedural unreasonableness and actual prejudice (e.g., contamination, artificially elevated results) to succeed.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces a critical boundary in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: when law enforcement obtains a valid warrant and follows proper procedures, constitutional violations by medical or hospital personnel do not automatically trigger the exclusionary rule. The court’s focus on deterrence means medical malpractice or protocol violations alone—without law enforcement connivance—will not invalidate blood test evidence. This significantly limits defendants’ suppression opportunities even when hospital procedures are demonstrably violated.
The decision also has broader implications for statutory interpretation in traffic law. By identifying ambiguity in Wisconsin’s lighting requirements and refusing to impose a duty on counsel to argue an unsettled legal question, the court provides law enforcement with breathing room. Officers can stop vehicles based on reasonable but mistaken interpretations of complex regulatory schemes without fear their stops will be invalidated or that defense counsel’s failure to challenge them constitutes ineffective assistance.