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WORST-TAKE OF THE WEEK?

Daily Caller Raked By Twitter After Disaster Take Slamming Utah Nurse

By Caleb EcarmaSep 5th, 2017, 11:26 am

In an early frontrunner for worst-take of the week, conservative tabloid Daily Caller published a piece aimed at the Utah nurse whose handcuffing and arrest went viral after she refused to provide a patient’s blood to a police officer.

In the piece titled “Arrested Utah Nurse Had It Coming,” Daily Caller editor Gregg Re makes the claim that Salt Lake City-based nurse Alex Wubbels may have deserved the treatment she received. “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,” writes Re.

Hilariously, Ken White — the author behind the popular law blog Popehat — predicted Daily Caller’s exact piece days before they published it, tweeting “Is it time for the first Hot Take on how the cop was right to arrest the nurse? Breitbart? Federalist? Daily Caller?”

The basic premise of Re’s piece is: Wubbels may have been in the wrong to stop the officer from taking the patient’s blood sample because of “exigent circumstances” — including possible intoxication during his car wreck.

However, there is a glaring mistake in the conservative tabloid’s post. Wubbels cited a hospital policy for not handing over the blood sample, as the patient-in-question was not under arrest, the police had no warrant, and the patient did not consent. This policy falls in line with search and seizure limitations covered under the Fourth Amendment, and while there are exceptions to search and seizure laws, they require probable cause.

Neither of these are the case in Wubbels’ situation, as her patient was not accused of being the culprit of a crime.

Wubbels recently went on CNN to explain her side of the story. “I stood my ground. I stood for what was right, which was to protect the patient,” she said.

Daily Caller also received plenty of criticism and a heavy dose of mockery from Twitter for their editor’s claim:

[image via screengrab]

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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Caleb Ecarma

Caleb Ecarma is a reporter at Mediaite. Email him here: [email protected] Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma

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