Opinion ID: 2812905
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: analysis

Text: We conclude the search in this case was not a valid search incident to arrest. Accordingly, we do not reach Gaskins’s alternative claim that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. A. Error Preservation. Gaskins’s motion to suppress raised both the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution. At the suppression hearing, Gaskins’s counsel spoke generally about exceptions to the warrant requirement, without specifying whether he was referring to the United States Constitution or the Iowa Constitution. The district court’s ruling only discusses caselaw—from both this court and the United States Supreme Court—and does not cite either constitution. The State asserts Gaskins’s mere citation to article I, section 8 in the motion did not preserve error based on that provision of the Iowa Constitution because the district court did not rule on it. See Meier v. Senecaut, 641 N.W.2d 532, 537 (Iowa 2002) (“It is a fundamental 8 doctrine of appellate review that issues must ordinarily be raised and decided by the district court before we will decide them on appeal.” (Emphasis added.)). However, we have said: When there are parallel constitutional provisions in the federal and state constitutions and a party does not indicate the specific constitutional basis, we regard both federal and state constitutional claims as preserved . . . . Even in these cases in which no substantive distinction had been made between state and federal constitutional provisions, we reserve the right to apply the principles differently under the state constitution compared to its federal counterpart. King v. State, 797 N.W.2d 565, 571 (Iowa 2011) (citations omitted). We conclude Gaskins preserved his arguments under the Iowa Constitution. See Lamasters v. State, 821 N.W.2d 856, 864 (Iowa 2012) (“If the court’s ruling indicates that the court considered the issue and necessarily ruled on it, even if the court’s reasoning is ‘incomplete or sparse,’ the issue has been preserved.” (quoting Meier, 641 N.W.2d at 540)); cf. Vance, 790 N.W.2d at 780 (confining analysis to the Fourth Amendment because the defendant never raised the Iowa Constitution, even perfunctorily). B. Constitutional Provisions and Interpretive Authority. Article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution provides: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable seizures and searches shall not be violated; and no warrant shall issue but on probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons and things to be seized. Iowa Const. art. I, § 8. This provision “is, of course, nearly identical to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution . . . . [U]nlike accepted versions of the Fourth Amendment, article I, section 8 utilizes a semicolon between the reasonableness clause and the warrant clause.” State v. Short, 851 N.W.2d 474, 500–01 (Iowa 2014). Members of this court have disagreed about the semicolon’s significance. On one hand, 9 some have suggested “[t]he semicolon suggests the framers believed that there was a relationship between the reasonableness clause and the warrant clause.” Id. at 483. Others believe it may simply be an “inconsequential punctuation difference.” Id. at 522 (Mansfield, J., dissenting). We do not revisit that debate here. Even “in . . . cases in which no substantive distinction [appears] between state and federal constitutional provisions, we reserve the right to apply the principles differently under the state constitution compared to its federal counterpart.” King, 797 N.W.2d at 571 (emphasis added); accord Short, 851 N.W.2d at 491 (majority opinion); State v. Kooima, 833 N.W.2d 202, 206 (Iowa 2013); see also State v. Roth, 305 N.W.2d 501, 510–11 (Iowa 1981) (McCormick, J., dissenting) (“Iowa has a proud tradition of concern for individual rights. We should not be reluctant to show greater sensitivity to the rights of Iowans under our constitution than the Supreme Court accords to their rights under the Federal Constitution.”); State v. Eckel, 888 A.2d 1266, 1275 (N.J. 2006) (“Although [Article I, Paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution] is almost identical to the text of the Fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, we have not hesitated . . . to afford our citizens greater protection against unreasonable searches and seizures under Article I, Paragraph 7 than would be the case under its federal counterpart.”). Of course, “our independent authority to construe the Iowa Constitution does not mean that we generally refuse to follow the United States Supreme Court decisions.” Short, 851 N.W.2d at 490. Rather, it merely assures that we “exercise . . . our best, independent judgment of the proper parameters of state constitutional commands,” as we are constitutionally required to do. Id.; see also State v. James, 393 N.W.2d 10 465, 468 (Iowa 1986) (Lavorato, J., dissenting) (“We push aside our constitutional responsibilities when we merely look to the Supreme Court for answers in examining the state constitution.”). 4 As the New Jersey Supreme Court has explained: [A]lthough th[e Supreme] Court may be a polestar that guides us as we navigate the New Jersey Constitution, we bear ultimate responsibility for the safe passage of our ship. Our eyes must not be so fixed on that star that we risk the welfare of our passengers on the shoals of constitutional doctrine. In interpreting the New Jersey Constitution, we must look in front of us as well as above us. State v. Hempele, 576 A.2d 793, 800 (N.J. 1990); accord State v. Hernandez, 410 So. 2d 1381, 1385 (La. 1982) (“We . . . give careful consideration to the United States Supreme Court interpretations of relevant provisions of the federal constitution, but we cannot and should not allow those decisions to replace our independent judgment in construing the constitution adopted by the people of Louisana.”); State v. Rowell, 188 P.3d 95, 99–100 (N.M. 2008) (“We are careful to consider the reasoning underlying federal constitutional interpretations when construing our own New Mexico Constitution, but we have declined to adopt federal constitutional analysis where we found it unpersuasive or flawed.”); see also Parker v. Commonwealth, 440 S.W.3d 381, 388 (Ky. 2014) (stressing that, although the state rule and federal rule were coterminous, “when interpreting our own Kentucky Constitution, th[e] Court is not tethered to the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court or the reasoning upon which those decisions are founded”). 4The State urges adoption of “neutral interpretive principles” or “divergence criteria” for deciding when this court will rely on independent state grounds for its decisions. We recently addressed and rejected the notion of such criteria in Short, and do so again here. See Short, 851 N.W.2d at 490–91. 11 C. The Search in This Case. Police searched Gaskins’s vehicle and opened the safe without a warrant. “A warrantless search is presumed unreasonable” unless an exception applies. State v. Moriarty, 566 N.W.2d 866, 868 (Iowa 1997); accord State v. Allensworth, 748 N.W.2d 789, 792 (Iowa 2008); State v. Tolsdorf, 574 N.W.2d 290, 292 (Iowa 1998). The only exception to the warrant requirement litigated in the district court—and thus the only one at issue in this appeal—is search incident to arrest (SITA). See Vance, 790 N.W.2d at 786–87. “The [SITA] exception derives from interests in officer safety and evidence preservation that are typically implicated in arrest situations.” Gant, 556 U.S. at 338, 129 S. Ct. at 1716, 173 L. Ed. 2d at 493. Importantly, however, “[t]he [SITA] exception to the warrant requirement must be narrowly construed and limited to accommodating only those interests it was created to serve.” State v. McGrane, 733 N.W.2d 671, 677 (Iowa 2007); accord Vance, 790 N.W.2d at 786–87; State v. Sterndale, 656 A.2d 409, 410 (N.H. 1995) (noting the proper scope of a SITA “is limited by the exception’s very specific justifications”); State v. Valdez, 224 P.3d 751, 758–59 (Wash. 2009) (“The [SITA] exception . . . arises from the necessity to provide for officer safety and the preservation of evidence of the crime of arrest, and the application and scope of that exception must be so grounded and so limited.”). The seminal decision exploring the SITA exception to the warrant requirement is Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 762–63, 89 S. Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685, 693–94 (1969). Chimel did not involve the search of a vehicle; rather, police arrested the defendant in his home and “then looked through the entire three-bedroom house, including the attic, the garage, and a small workshop.” Id. at 754, 89 S. Ct. at 2035, 12 23 L. Ed. 2d at 688. The Supreme Court explained the search’s wide sweep rendered it constitutionally invalid: There is ample justification . . . for a search of the arrestee’s person and the area “within his immediate control”— construing that phrase to mean the area from which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. There is no comparable justification, however, for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs—or, for that matter, for searching through all the desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself. Such searches, in the absence of well-recognized exceptions, may be made only under the authority of a search warrant. Id. at 763, 89 S. Ct. at 2040, 23 L. Ed. 2d at 694. In short, the Court confirmed that allowing officers to perform a SITA of a limited area “serve[s] the dual purposes of protecting arresting officers and safeguarding any evidence the arrestee may seek to conceal or destroy.” Vance, 790 N.W.2d at 786; see Chimel, 395 U.S. at 768, 89 S. Ct. at 2043, 23 L. Ed. 2d at 697. In Belton, the Supreme Court confronted the question of the extent to which the Chimel principles should apply in adjudicating a Fourth Amendment challenge to the search of an automobile conducted incident to the arrest of an occupant. See Belton, 453 U.S. at 459, 101 S. Ct. at 2863, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 774 (stating the question in that case was “the proper scope of a search of the interior of an automobile incident to a lawful custodial arrest of its occupants”). An officer pulled a car over for speeding and Belton was a passenger in the car. Id. at 455, 101 S. Ct. at 2861, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 772. When the officer approached the car, he “smelled burnt marihuana and [saw] on the floor of the car an envelope marked ‘Supergold’ that he associated with marihuana.” Id. at 455–56, 101 S. Ct. at 2862, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 772. He arrested the car’s occupants 13 for possession of marijuana and “then searched the passenger compartment of the car. On the back seat he found a black leather jacket belonging to Belton,” and upon opening a zipped jacket pocket he discovered cocaine. Id. at 456, 101 S. Ct. at 2862, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 772. Belton moved to suppress the cocaine on the ground that the warrantless search violated his rights under the Fourth Amendment. Id. The Court held that “when a policeman has made a lawful custodial arrest of the occupant of an automobile, he may, as a contemporaneous incident of that arrest, search the passenger compartment of that automobile.” Id. at 460, 101 S. Ct. at 2864, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 775. The Court based its conclusion on the notion that the entire passenger compartment is “generally, even if not inevitably, within ‘the area into which an arrestee might reach.’ ” Id. (quoting Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S. Ct. at 2040, 23 L. Ed. 2d at 694). But see id. at 466, 101 S. Ct. at 2867, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 779 (Brennan, J., dissenting) (characterizing this assumption as “fiction”). Further, the Court concluded that incident to a lawful arrest “the police may also examine the contents of any containers found within the passenger compartment.” Id. at 460, 101 S. Ct. at 2864, 69 L. Ed. 2d at 775 (majority opinion). We adopted Belton in 1981. State v. Sanders, 312 N.W.2d 534, 539 (Iowa 1981) (“[W]e believe Belton strikes a reasonably fair balance between the rights of the individual and those of society. We adopt it now as our rule.”). However, Belton soon became the subject of significant criticism. See Vance, 790 N.W.2d at 787–88 (collecting commentary along with caselaw from multiple states rejecting Belton); Eckel, 888 A.2d at 1272–73 (“[T]he drumbeat of scholarly opposition to Belton has remained constant.”); see also, e.g., Wayne R. LaFave, The 14 Fourth Amendment in an Imperfect World: On Drawing “Bright Lines” and “Good Faith”, 43 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 307, 332 (1982) (“[T]here is good reason to be critical of the Court’s work in Belton); Eugene L. Shapiro, New York v. Belton and State Constitutional Doctrine, 105 W. Va. L. Rev. 131, 137 (2002) (“Criticism of Belton has been vigorous and sustained.”). So, “[a]lthough Sanders held Iowa’s constitutional doctrine was the same as Belton, Sanders was decided before the criticism of Belton began.” Vance, 790 N.W.2d at 789. Some members of the Supreme Court became wary of Belton’s breadth. In 2004, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor expressed concern that, after Belton, “lower court decisions seem[ed] . . . to treat the ability to search a vehicle incident to the arrest of a recent occupant as a police entitlement rather than as an exception [to the warrant requirement].” Thornton v. United States, 541 U.S. 615, 624, 124 S. Ct. 2127, 2133, 158