Opinion ID: 1468342
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: search and seizure of hair samples

Text: Appellant contends that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence head and pubic hair samples seized from him without a search warrant subsequent to his arrest. He asserts that there was no probable cause to search, and that in any event, no exigent circumstances existed to justify dispensing with the search warrant requirement. Appellant was arrested for the rape and murder of Rebecca Rieser on September 14, 1972, at 8:45 a. m., by homicide Officer Thomas J. Kilcullen of the Metropolitan Police. At that time, he was already in police custody on another charge. Almost immediately, prior to appellant's presentment at 9:30 a. m., Officer Colin Alford, a police technician with the mobile crime office, took hair samples from appellant's head and pubic area. The trial court denied appellant's motion to suppress these samples at a hearing on October 3, 1973, and held that the challenged search was valid as incident to a lawful arrest. There is some authority to support the trial court's holding. A search incident to a lawful arrest is a well recognized exception to the warrant requirement which has been justified by the reasonableness of searching for weapons, instruments of escape, and evidence of crime when a person is taken into official custody and detained lawfully. United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 801, 94 S.Ct. 1234, 39 L.Ed.2d 771 (1975); Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973); Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969); Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652 (1914). We hesitate to extend this rationale to the instant case, however, because it is not entirely clear whether the right to search an arrestee for evidence of crime without a warrant applies to a situation such as this, in which the evidence sought lacked for the most part an evanescent quality, i. e., the possibility that it might dissipate or be lost or destroyed by the defendant, an accomplice, or the simple passage of time, which could justify an exception to the warrant requirement. See Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966). It can be argued that the Supreme Court has resolved this question in the affirmative. In United States v. Edwards, 415 U.S. 801, 94 S.Ct. 1234, 39 L.Ed.2d 771 (1975), the Court upheld the warrantless seizure of petitioner's clothing, which police removed from him after he had been incarcerated for ten hours and which contained inculpatory paint chips. The Court deemed this a search incident to a lawful custodial arrest, subject to and satisfying the test of reasonableness. The Court neither relied on nor referred to the evanescent quality of the paint chips. When this is considered in light of the fact that the search took place ten hours after petitioner was arrested, a period during which a warrant could have been obtained, Edwards appears to carve out a broad exception to the warrant requirement for incidental searches. The Edwards exception does not seem to have been conditioned on the evanescent quality of the evidence seized. We note, however, that the evanescence of fingernail scrapings was the basis for upholding their warrantless seizure in Cupp v. Murphy, supra, 412 U.S. at 295, 93 S.Ct. 2000, and that the paint chips in Edwards were similarly evanescent, even though the Court did not expressly rely on this factor. More recently in United States v. Chadwick, ___ U.S. ___, 97 S.Ct. 2476, 53 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977), the Court affirmed the suppression of marijuana seized from a foot-locker without a warrant after petitioners were arrested. The Court rejected the government's contention that a warrantless search of property in possession of an arrestee was always constitutionally permissible if supported by probable cause. The Court noted that once government agents gained control of the footlocker there was no longer any danger that the arrestee might gain access to the property to seize a weapon or destroy evidence.  Id. at 2485 (emphasis added). To this apparent departure from Edwards, the Court added the observation that police had had one hour of exclusive control of the footlocker before they searched it, during which they could have obtained a warrant. Id. at 2485-86. In the instant case police could not base a warrantless search and seizure of hair samples on any realistic fear that appellant would destroy his own hair. Moreover, appellant was in custody at a police station and a warrant could easily have been obtained. [14] Although Edwards may be broad enough to support the admissibility of this evidence, Cupp and Chadwick engender doubts. We are not prepared at this time to hold that the warrantless search and seizure of hair samples from an arrestee is proper absent some additional exigent circumstance. [15] We need not, however, decide that question here because the other evidence of appellant's guilt in this case was so overwhelming as to render any possible error committed by admission of these hair samples harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967).