Background
Bensalem Township police responded to a report of a possible cardiac arrest and found Eugene Volansky passed out in the driver’s seat of a car at the end of his driveway, with his head against the steering wheel and the horn sounding. After he awakened, Volansky appeared dazed and impaired. He told an officer that he had relapsed and had used heroin the previous day and that morning. Traffic-camera and license-plate-reader footage placed the car on nearby roads roughly 30 minutes earlier and showed lane-control problems.
At police headquarters, an officer asked Volansky to consent to a blood draw. Volansky initially refused. Another officer then explained that police could seek a search warrant and that refusing to comply after a warrant issued could result in an obstruction charge. Volansky signed the chemical-testing form and did not attempt to stop the draw. Testing detected methamphetamine and fentanyl. A Bucks County jury and judge convicted him of driving-under-the-influence and driving-with-a-suspended-license offenses.
Volansky moved to suppress the blood evidence, arguing that police had badgered him after an unequivocal refusal and used the threat of additional charges to overcome his will. He also challenged an officer’s trial testimony describing details the officer said could be seen when surveillance footage was enlarged, although those details were not visible in the version shown to the jury.
The Court’s Holding
The Superior Court affirmed in a nonprecedential memorandum. President Judge Emeritus Panella applied the totality-of-the-circumstances test, which asks whether consent resulted from a free and unconstrained choice rather than express or implied coercion. Relevant considerations include custody, police tactics, knowledge of the right to refuse, the person’s intelligence and education, and the level of cooperation.
A second request for consent did not itself amount to coercion. The panel distinguished cases in which officers persisted through four or more refusals. Here, officers revisited the question only once, the exchange remained calm, and Volansky had been advised of his right to refuse a warrantless draw. His presence in a holding cell was relevant but did not make consent involuntary by itself.
The explanation about a warrant also did not violate the rule against conditioning consent on criminal punishment for refusing a warrantless blood test. Police told Volansky that they would seek judicial authorization and that continued resistance after a valid warrant issued could support obstruction charges. That accurately described the anticipated legal process. It was materially different from threatening enhanced punishment merely for declining a warrantless test. On the evidentiary issue, the court assumed without deciding that the officer’s enlarged-video description was improper, but found any error harmless because other evidence overwhelmingly identified Volansky as the driver.
Key Takeaways
- An initial refusal does not permanently bar police from asking once more for consent, although repeated requests can become coercive.
- Custody is one factor in the voluntariness analysis and does not automatically invalidate consent given at a police station.
- Police may accurately explain that they will seek a warrant and that a person must comply if a valid warrant issues.
- That explanation differs from threatening criminal penalties for refusing a warrantless blood draw, which constitutional doctrine prohibits.
Why It Matters
Volansky gives Pennsylvania DUI lawyers a practical boundary for post-refusal conversations. The decisive questions are how often officers renewed the request, what they said, and whether their manner or wording suggested that the suspect had no meaningful choice. Defense counsel should obtain body-camera and station video and reconstruct the exchange precisely; a transcript that collapses several requests into one may conceal the coercive pressure on which suppression turns.
For police and prosecutors, the opinion favors a restrained, accurate explanation of the warrant process. Officers should separate the immediate right to decline a warrantless draw from the legal duty to comply with a later judicial warrant. The decision is nonprecedential, but its application of existing Pennsylvania consent and blood-testing cases offers a useful litigation framework.