At 12:30am, a white SUV struck and killed a 6’7” tall, 260-pound teenager wearin

At 12:30am, a white SUV struck and killed a 6’7” tall, 260-pound teenager wearing dark clothing as he was crossing a street. A witness testified that she thought the SUV was traveling near or just over the 45-mile-per-hour (mph) speed limit. Another witness stated that he was driving at “roughly 50, 55 miles an hour” and believed the SUV was traveling at about the same speed. He also said that: he saw the pedestrian’s legs in stride lit up by the SUV’s headlights and “then almost simultaneously thereafter [he saw] brake lights and then the collision”; a pedestrian wearing dark clothing would have been difficult to see against the dark background; and he had not anticipated anybody stepping out into the pedestrian walkway against a red light. When he saw the SUV drive away, he followed the vehicle, called 9-1-1, and gave the license plate number.
When a police officer spoke with driver of the SUV, he admitted to having had “a little” to drink that night. The officer surmised the driver was intoxicated from his “red bloodshot watery eyes, slurred speech, and a stagger in his gait.” The driver refused to take a breathalyzer test in the field. The driver was then arrested and, at 2:35am, his blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was 0.18.
After investigating the accident scene, officers determined that the SUV was likely traveling at 55 mph. The lead investigating officer found that an unimpaired driver, traveling at 45 to 55 mph, would have about 1.5 seconds to respond to an unexpected danger in the roadway. Thus, even if the SUV had been traveling at the speed limit, a reasonable driver would not have been able to react quickly enough to avoid hitting a pedestrian stepping out unexpectedly against a red light at night. Accordingly, police concluded that neither the vehicle’s speed nor the driver’s BAC was the primary cause of the accident.
A year later, white the SUV was in storage, police downloaded information from the car’s “black box”—a data recorder designed to monitor sensors which help regulate airbag deployment and monitor speed, breaking, seat belt use, and changes from front-to-back and side-to-side velocity. The black box data recorded speeds of 69 to 76 mph immediately before the SUV hit the pedestrian. Data also revealed that the driver had begun breaking 1.3 to 2.1 seconds before impact. An accident reconstruction expert used this information to determine that: the SUV hit the teenager at 60 to 61 mph; and the driver had sufficient time to swerve and miss the pedestrian.
The driver was charged with vehicular manslaughter. He moved to suppress the evidence against him gathered from the search and seizure of data from the SUV’s black box since it was conducted without a warrant. The trial court denied the motion on the basis that driver had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the black box data. On appeal, however, the court ruled in favor of the defendant.
If this case were appealed to the state high court of last resort and you were a justice on that court, how would you rule? Why?