Source: https://openjurist.org/262/f2d/449
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 02:47:46+00:00

Document:
Mr. John T. Bonner, Washington, D.C., for appellant.
Mr. Nathan J. Paulson, Asst. U.S. Atty., for appellee. Mr. Oliver Gasch, U.S. Atty., and Messrs. Carl W. Belcher, Joseph M. Hannon, and John W. Kern, III, Asst. U.S. Attys., were on the brief for appellee.
Before PRETTYMAN, WILBUR K. MILLER, and WASHINGTON, Circuit judges.
Appellant Morrison was convicted of committing a perverted act on a young boy, aged ten or eleven.1 The offense allegedly took place in Morrison's home. This was a one-story building with a basement. Morrison, who was a construction worker, was building the house himself, and it was only partly constructed. The front door had been installed and at the time of these events was locked. No doors had been installed in the passageway from the outdoors to the basement or from the basement to the living quarters. These two openings were partially blocked by pieces of plywood. Despite its unfinished condition Morrison lived in the house, alone.
The record is not altogether clear as the precise time of the events involved. The clearest allegations are that the offense occurred about four o'clock in the afternoon, that the boy related the affair to his grandmother, the grandmother told his mother, and she in turn notified the police. She did not await their arrival, however, but went to the grocery store. The officers arrived at about 5:45 p.m. The boy and an older brother were at home, and they got into the scout car with the officers and pointed out Morrison's home. In front of this house was another brother of the boy involved. This brother apparently assured the officers that Morrison was in the house; he (the boy) had been sitting on his grandmother's porch, two doors away, and was sure he would have noticed Morrison's departure. One of the officers knocked on the front door several times but received no response. Then the officer walked around to the back of the house, through the opening into the basement, upstairs, and through the opening into the living quarters. He then opened the front door and admitted his brother officer. They searched the house for Morrison, but he was not there. At that point the three boys came into the house, and the one involved in the alleged offense showed the officers the room in which he said the affair had occurred and pointed out a handkerchief which he said had been used by Morrison and which allegedly bore some tangible evidence of the offense. The officers took the handkerchief. The introduction of this article as evidence at the trial is the disputed point now before the court. Morrison says his motion to suppress should have been granted, because the search and the seizure were illegal, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Either of two propositions is dispositive of this appeal, and either requires reversal.
In the case at bar the officers were making a search of the house, primarily for Morrison himself (a matter we shall discuss in a moment), but indisputably a search. It was of a private home and without permission or a warrant of any kind, and without an arrest being made. We do not have here the problem of the admissibility of purely evidentiary material seized on the premises occupied by a defendant when he was arrested, or seized under a search warrant. The circumstances here are akin to the general search for evidence so vigorously condemned in our jurisprudence. The Supreme Court spoke clearly in Harris, in Lefkowitz, and in Gouled, all supra.
But it is argued that the officers were validly searching for Morrison to arrest him and that the handkerchief was in plain sight and so could be seized. That brings us to the second question.
2. Was the officers' entry legal?
The factors for consideration are clear. This was a home. The officers had no warrant, either for arrest or for search. We may assume they had reasonable grounds for two beliefs, (1) that a felony had been committed and (2) that the suspected felon was in the house. But they had no personal knowledge that he was there; they had neither seen nor heard him. The suspected felony was, as the Government phrases it, a 'crime of gentleness'; by which is meant that it involved no breach of the peace, disturbance or injury. It involved no instrumentalities or fruits of crime. It had occurred, if at all, about two hours before the officers arrived.
The officers entered the house to make a search. It was, to be sure, a search for a person rather than the usual search for an article of property, but it was a search. The officers made this indubitably clear in their testimony; they went into the house to look for Morrison. It is true they intended to arrest him if they found him, and so the ultimate objective was an arrest. The Government urges that this latter fact requires that we apply the rules of law pertaining to arrest rather than the rules governing search. But the search was a factual prerequisite to an arrest; it was the first objective of the entry; the officers did in fact search the house. They entered to make a search as a necessary prerequisite to possible arrest.
This court has several times in recent years examined the problem of the invasion of private dwellings by police officers.7 The Supreme Court has examined the problem many times.8 We think it is unnecessary to discuss the matter again at any length.
We note the attempt of the Government here, as in some other cases, to equate the powers of an officer who has a warrant with those of one who does not have a warrant. Those powers are not the same and never have been in Anglo-American jurisprudence. A warrant of arrest is issued by some official authorized by law to perform that duty, usually a magistrate, and it directs the police or other officer to arrest the named person.9 For example, a Commissioner's warrant in this jurisdiction begins with the words: 'You are hereby commanded to arrest (the defendant)'. Thereafter the police officer has no concern whatever with the question whether the person should or should not be arrested. The officer with a warrant has one duty and one duty only; he is to arrest the person. His powers under the warrant are designed to that purpose. The forefathers were concerned about the arrest of people. One critical aspect of their concern was the making of the decision that a person should be arrested. Out of that concern has grown the volume of rules which prescribe when a warrant must be had and when an arrest can be made without a warrant. There are vital differences. The power of an officer with a warrant cannot be equated with his power when he has no warrant.
Without attempting to sort out the precise critical factor in each one of the greater welter od decided cases, let us come directly to the point. The necessities of the moment make the difference between legal and illegal entries in the cases included within our question. For example, in Smith v. United States,11 a typical narcotics case, the officers sent an informer into a house with makred money, and he returned in a few moments with narcotics but no money. To postpone arrest until a warrant could be sought would, under those circumstances, probably allow the fruits of the crime and contraband to be destroyed. The officers well knew this. We there sustained the entry without a warrant to make an arrest.12 But no such circumstances extisted in the present case.
Morrison did not refuse admittance to the officers; he was not there. Under those conditions the basic principle of the rule governing searches and seizures comes into play. In Jones v. United States the Supreme Court stated again what it has many times held: 'The decisions of this Court have time and again underscored the essential purpose of the Fourth Amendment to shield the citizen from unwarranted intrusions into his privacy', citing cases.17 The reason for the rule is the protection of the right of privacy; it is not the prevention of a fracas, although that is certainly an important consideration. A man's home is just as private when he is not there as when he is. Police officers cannot, without a warrant of any kind, walk into an unoccupied, unlocked private home and search it, either for property or for a person. It would be a far departure from fundamentals, it seems to us, to hold that a man has a protected right of privacy in his home and its belongings so long as he is on the premises, but none when he is not there. Not only does such a proposition appear untenable on its face but the cases so indicate.
The Government cites many cases, but we do not find in them the doctrine the Government urges. It also cites again cases it cited to us in Accarino, supra; we examined those cases there and refer here to that discussion.
In Love v. United States,23 Paper v. United States,24 Lane v. United States,25 and Barrientes v. United States,26 the officers had warrants. In Martin v. United States27 a garage was held to be protected, but the circumstances seen and heard on the spot by the officer made the search reasonable. In Gibson v. United States28 this court held an entry illegal where the officers had an arrest warrant for a man not in the house but gained admittance by implying that they had a search warrant. In Gatewood v. United States29 we held illegal an entry by an officer who thought a bench warrant was outstanding whereas in fact it had been executed.
We think that under the authorities officers without a warrant cannot enter, even without actually breaking, a private dwelling to search for a suspected felon, no permission being given and no circumstances of necessitous haste being present.
It is significant that in the Harris case, supra, the Supreme Court took the trouble to note: 'This is not a case in which law enforcement officials have invaded a private dwelling without authority and seized evidence of crime.'30 The case before us is precisely a case in which law enforcement officers invaded a private dwelling without authority and seized evidence of crime.
, the judgment of the District Court must be reversed and Morrison awarded a new trial.

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