Background
Simone Bailey-Cobb and Andrew Toombs were separately charged with driving under the influence. As conditions of pretrial release, the Snohomish County District Court required each defendant to wear a transdermal patch that collects sweat and tests for drugs. The court cited Bailey-Cobb’s extensive criminal history and prior deferred DUI prosecution, and Toombs’s history of DUI violations and the danger he posed to community safety.
Both defendants sought writs of habeas corpus, arguing that the patch violated article I, section 7 of the Washington Constitution. The trial court denied their petitions, concluding that although the patch constituted a search, RCW 10.21.045 and CrRLJ 3.2 supplied authority of law. Their appeals were consolidated.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals held that imposing the drug-monitoring patches violated Bailey-Cobb’s and Toombs’s rights under article I, section 7. Because they were charged but had not been convicted, they retained undiminished privacy interests. The State conceded that the patches intruded on private affairs, leaving the question whether the searches were supported by authority of law.
The court concluded that neither a compelling-interest balancing test nor the special-needs exception justified the searches. Washington precedent did not support applying those doctrines to pretrial releasees, and the patches were not narrowly tailored in any event: enrollment required disclosure of substantial personal information to a third-party monitoring company, the patches collected evidence of all drugs ingested, and they did not test for alcohol. The court therefore held that RCW 10.21.045 and CrRLJ 3.2 did not constitutionally authorize the patches as applied here.
The court reversed and remanded with instructions to amend both pretrial release orders by removing the drug-monitoring-patch requirements. It did not reach the defendants’ separate arguments that the district court failed to make the findings required by CrRLJ 3.2 or that the statute conflicted with the court rule.
Key Takeaways
- Defendants awaiting trial retain their full privacy interests under article I, section 7 of the Washington Constitution.
- A pretrial drug-monitoring patch is a search and, on these facts, was too invasive and overinclusive to be narrowly tailored to public safety.
- RCW 10.21.045 and CrRLJ 3.2 did not provide constitutional authority for the patch requirements as applied to Bailey-Cobb and Toombs.
Why It Matters
The decision limits Washington courts’ ability to impose suspicionless bodily drug monitoring as a condition of pretrial release. A statutory or rule-based power to require testing does not by itself overcome article I, section 7 when the monitoring intrudes broadly into the private affairs of an unconvicted defendant.
The opinion also underscores the constitutional distinction between pretrial defendants and people serving probation or community-custody sentences, whose expectations of privacy may be diminished following conviction.