I had a question from one of our Highway Patrol Corporals. He is in a fairly rural county and the local hospital contacted him wanting to know who they should bill for drawing blood pursuant to a search warrant (they have gone to warrants in that county).

For those of you who use blood warrants, who get the hit? The Defendant? The County? The requesting agency? no one--it's free?

Janette Ansolabehere

Don't know but 18.08 makes the hospital staff "bound to aid in the execution of the same" The duty is one that carries judicial mandate.

Getting overpaid for 5 seconds work, $250.
Not going to jail for obstructing a search.....priceless

I'd offer a compromise with the hospital -- agree to include it as restitution in the case. Another option is to offer to include the hospital people in your PR promoting the program and see if they'll agree to do it for free as part of serving their community, like our county hospital here does. They also thought that setting up the billing system for it would just be a pain in the neck and didn't want to hassle with it.

When we set up our program, we made an agreement with the hospital to try to collect $100 per blood draw. We include that amount on all those defendants placed on probation, as restitution to the county. However, we have a county owned hospital, for those that go uncollected, usually jailed defendants, the hospital just writes off.
Seems that they do ok since we charge $100 per draw, and they are really not out any expense.Would be nice if there was a way to charge it as court costs.

We do blood search warrants all the time. There is no bill sent by the hospitals in my county. It's free!