Opinion ID: 358848
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: a warrant is required

Text: 12 Prescott moved to suppress all fruits of the entry into her apartment, including all evidence that Duvernay and his packages had been found inside, because the officers had neither a warrant nor an excuse for not obtaining one. The district judge denied the motion. He took the view that the officers needed no warrant to enter the apartment because they had probable cause to arrest Duvernay and to believe that he was inside. Believing, as he did, that a warrant was not required in any event, the district judge took no evidence, and made no ruling, on the issue of exigent circumstances. Forget the exigent business, he told defense counsel, who attempted to argue that the officers could have obtained a warrant quickly and easily, without creating an undue risk that evidence would be destroyed or that Duvernay would flee. It seems to me that they had probable cause to arrest Mr. Duvernay . . . I believe they could come in there and get him and I'm not really much impressed with the facts. R.T. 31. 13 The court cited section 844 of the California Penal Code as supporting his view that no warrant was required. That statute, which requires a peace officer desiring to effect an arrest inside a dwelling to demand admittance and explain his purpose before forcibly entering, assumes a lawful entry and does not purport to excuse, in all situations the failure to first obtain a warrant. In any event, federal law, not state law, is controlling here on the question of whether a warrantless search or seizure is lawful. To the extent that he based his ruling on the California statute, the district judge was therefore in error. 14 Because the district court declined to rule on the issue of exigent circumstances and because the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing is insufficient to permit us to do so, we are squarely presented on this appeal with the question of whether, absent an emergency, police officers who have probable cause to arrest one whom they reasonably believe to be in a dwelling may enter the dwelling without a warrant in order to carry out the arrest. 15 The Supreme Court has never resolved this issue. It has held that police need no warrant to arrest a felony suspect on probable cause in a public place; United States v. Watson, 1976, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598; United States v. Santana, 1976, 427 U.S. 38, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 49 L.Ed.2d 300. However, the Court has expressly reserved, on numerous occasions, the grave constitutional question of whether an entry into a dwelling to arrest a person reasonably believed within, upon probable cause that he had committed a felony, under circumstances where no reason appears why an arrest warrant could not have been sought, is consistent with the Fourth Amendment. Jones v. United States, 1958, 357 U.S. 493, 499-500, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514; See also, United States v. Watson, supra, 423 U.S. at 418, fn. 6, 96 S.Ct. 820; Gerstein v. Pugh, 1975, 420 U.S. 103, 113, n.13, 95 S.Ct. 854, 43 L.Ed.2d 54; Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 1971, 403 U.S. 443, 477-81, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564. In Coolidge the Court stated in Dicta that the notion that the warrantless entry of a man's house in order to arrest him on probable cause is Per se legitimate is in fundamental conflict with the basic principle of Fourth Amendment law that searches and seizures inside a man's house without warrant are Per se unreasonable in the absence of some one of a number of well defined 'exigent circumstances.'  403 U.S. 477-78, 91 S.Ct. 2044. 16 This Circuit has never decided the question either. United States v. Flickinger, 9 Cir., 1978, 573 F.2d 1349 at p. 1353; United States v. Masterson, 9 Cir., 1976, 529 F.2d 30, 31; United States v. McLaughlin, 9 Cir., 1975, 525 F.2d 517, 520, Cert. denied, 1976, 427 U.S. 904, 96 S.Ct. 3190, 49 L.Ed.2d 1198; United States v. Bustamante-Gamez, 9 Cir., 1973, 488 F.2d 4, 8, Cert. denied, 1974, 416 U.S. 970, 94 S.Ct. 1993, 40 L.Ed.2d 559. While we have stated in Dicta that the warrant requirement is applicable not only in cases of entry to search for property, but also in cases of entry to arrest a suspect, United States v. Phillips, 9 Cir., 1974, 497 F.2d 1131, 1135, and See United States v. Calhoun, 9 Cir., 1976, 542 F.2d 1094, 1102-103, we have never before so held. 17 In his opinion for the Court in Katz v. United States, 1967, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, Mr. Justice Stewart says that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places, Id. at 351, 88 S.Ct. at 511. But the Amendment itself gives special emphasis to the protection of people in their houses: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . . The singling out of houses suggests that the draftsmen were especially anxious to safeguard the sanctities of a man's home and the privacies of life. Boyd v. United States, 1886, 116 U.S. 616, 630, 6 S.Ct. 524, 532, 29 L.Ed. 746. 18 This is consistent with the emphasis placed upon the sanctity of the home in England immediately before the revolution, which is well exemplified in Mr. Justice Brennan's opinion in Miller v. United States, 1958, 357 U.S. 301, at 307, 78 S.Ct. 1190, at 1194, 2 L.Ed.2d 1332.Remarks attributed to William Pitt, Earl of Chathan, on the occasion of debate in Parliament (in 1763) on the searches incident to the enforcement of an excise on cider, eloquently expressed the principle: 19 The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter; the rain may enter; but the King of England cannot enter all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement! 20 (footnote omitted) 21 It was on the same occasion that Pitt said, Every man's house (is) his castle. Id., fn. 7. 22 It is thus not surprising that the Court has long recognized that physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed, United States v. United States District Court, 1972, 407 U.S. 297, 313, 92 S.Ct. 2125, 2134, 32 L.Ed.2d 752, and has traditionally afforded the most stringent Fourth Amendment protection to the sanctity of private dwellings. United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 1976, 428 U.S. 543, 561, 96 S.Ct. 3074, 3084, 49 L.Ed.2d 1116. Only exceptional circumstances have been held sufficient to justify a search conducted inside a private home without judicial authorization. (T)he Constitution requires a magistrate to pass on the desires of the police before they violate the privacy of the home. We cannot be true to that constitutional requirement and excuse the absence of a search warrant without a showing . . . that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative. McDonald v. United States, 1948, 335 U.S. 451, 456, 69 S.Ct. 191, 193, 93 L.Ed. 153. When the right of privacy must reasonably yield to the right of search is, as a rule, to be decided by a judicial officer, not a policeman or Government enforcement agent. Johnson v. United States, 1948, 333 U.S. 10, 14, 68 S.Ct. 367, 369, 92 L.Ed. 436. 23 Had the officers in this case arrested Duvernay on the street, and then entered Prescott's apartment solely to search for the packages, their certainty that the objects they sought would be found within would not have excused their failure to obtain a warrant. Had they gazed through a window and observed the packages lying on a table, in plain sight, they would nonetheless have been obliged to submit their evidence to a magistrate for his disinterested determination that intrusion was necessary. Belief, however well founded, that an article sought is concealed in a dwelling house furnishes no justification for a search of that place without a warrant. Agnello v. United States, 1925, 269 U.S. 20, 33, 46 S.Ct. 4, 6, 70 L.Ed. 145. Any assumption that evidence sufficient to support a magistrate's disinterested determination to issue a search warrant will justify the officers in making a search without a warrant would reduce the (Fourth) Amendment to a nullity and leave the people's homes secure only in the discretion of police officers. Johnson v. United States, supra, 333 U.S. at 14, 68 S.Ct. at 369. 24 The sanctity of the home is no less threatened when the object of police entry is the seizure of a person, rather than a thing. A magistrate's disinterested determination that governmental intrusion is warranted is no less desirable when the policeman's quarry is a suspect, rather than a piece of evidence. 25 As the California Supreme Court has noted, it would he thoroughly incongruous to pay homage to the considerable body of law that has developed to protect an individual's belongings from unreasonable search and seizure in his home, and at the same time assert that identical considerations do not operate to safeguard the individual himself in the same setting. People v. Ramey, 16 Cal.3d 263, 275, 127 Cal.Rptr. 629, 636, 545 P.2d 1333, 1340 (In banc ), Cert. denied, 1976, 429 U.S. 929, 97 S.Ct. 335, 50 L.Ed.2d 299. This reasoning is equally applicable when it is a third person, present in the home with the householder's consent, for whom the police are looking. The Third Circuit is of the opinion that in such a case a search warrant, not just an arrest warrant is required. Government of Virgin Islands v. Gereau, 3 Cir., 1974, 502 F.2d 914 at 928. We think, however, that the distinction between a search warrant and an arrest warrant is an artificial one. The Fourth Amendment makes no such distinction. It provides: 26 (N)o Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 27 The warrant, whatever it be called, must describe the place to be searched, here apartment 544, and the persons or things to be seized, here Duvernay and the parcels. 28 We join the District of Columbia Circuit, Dorman v. United States, 1970, 140 U.S.App.D.C. 313, 435 F.2d 385 (In banc ), and the Second Circuit, United States v. Reed, 572 F.2d 412, 1978, and hold that, absent exigent circumstances, police who have probable cause to arrest a felony suspect must obtain a warrant before entering a dwelling to carry out the arrest. 1 29 Prescott asks us to hold that there were no exigent circumstances to justify entry without a warrant. She points out that her apartment was located less than five blocks from San Francisco's Federal Court House, which was well stocked with federal judges and magistrates in the early hours of the afternoon when the arrest was carried out. She also argues that had the officers delayed to get a warrant, Duvernay could not possibly have escaped, armed resistance was unlikely given the non-violent nature of the offense, and the evidence which the officers sought was not readily susceptible of destruction. However, the trial judge never reached this question, and we do not know what showing the government might be able to make in response to Prescott's contentions. We therefore think that the better course is to remand for further proceedings.