Here's an "interesting" legal opinion, from an (alleged) attorney:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/04/arres ... it-coming/
. . . Despite reams of inaccurate reporting on the incident, Wubbels was likely legally wrong under federal law. The case is a much closer one than it appears.
. . . Never mind the fact that Section 1.3 of the Utah Commercial Driver’s License Handbook states that “If you operate a CMV [commercial vehicle], you shall be deemed to have given your consent to alcohol testing,” creating a potential implied consent justification for the blood draw because the victim was driving a commercial truck. Never mind that the hospital’s policy does not have the force of law, even if the local police department agreed to its terms. Crucially, the policy overlooks a well-established exception to the warrant requirement: Police simply do not need a warrant if exigent circumstances justify an urgent search and seizure of evidence. The imminent loss of blood evidence, which would be useful in a drunk-driving case, qualifies as a potentially exigent circumstance.
. . . There are some more complicated questions at play here. The police are on far shakier ground if they demanded the nurse to draw blood for them, as opposed to the police drawing the blood themselves. But the video suggests that the police wanted to draw blood here.
“If she interferes in any way with me getting the blood drawn, she needs to be arrested,” an officer says early on in the video. And The Washington Post has reported that Payne is a trained police phlebotomist, meaning that he is sent to hospitals to collect blood from patients and check for illicit substances.
In no way am I defending what Payne did. I am not qualified to assess the merits of this legal analysis.
I too was outraged by what I saw in the videos.
I would simply point out, sometimes the media does not report all the facts correctly and it is sometimes too easy to jump to erroneous conclusions.
Example: Was the nurse refusing to draw the blood or was she refusing to let the officer draw the blood? Sometimes details matter.
Example: Why did they need the patient's blood in the first place? I didn't see where that was explained. Apparently he was a victim, not a suspect, so on what grounds can they take his blood anyway?