Opinion ID: 1179505
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the majority has taken a step backward

Text: The majority opinion confines Stroud to the narrowest possible interpretation. In taking this position, the majority abandons the attempt to provide law enforcement with a workable standard for warrantless automobile searches and forces police officers to cope once again with the impossible situation prevailing under Ringer. The majority reads Stroud as addressing only the incident to arrest part of Ringer. It states Stroud 's holding this way: [P]otential danger to officers and destructibility of evidence warranted a bright-line rule for a search incident to arrest. Majority, at 734-35. It goes on to say: In the areas of search incident to arrest and Terry stops, we found that concerns for the safety of officers and potential destructibility of evidence do outweigh privacy interests and warrant a bright-line rule permitting limited searches. See State v. Stroud, supra ; State v. Kennedy [107 Wn.2d 1, 726 P.2d 445 (1986)]. Majority, at 735. According to the majority, then, Stroud overruled the case-by-case totality of the circumstances approach only as it might apply to the question whether the warrantless search was truly incidental to an arrest. For example, Stroud eliminates the question whether certain areas or objects actually were within the suspect's reach during the arrest. Under the majority's interpretation though, Stroud has no bearing on the exigent circumstances leg of Ringer. Strictly speaking, the majority is correct. The search challenged in Stroud was made incident to an arrest. There was no sign of exigency in the record and the State did not attempt to justify the search with a showing of exigent circumstances, as Ringer would have permitted. We are free, in terms of stare decisis, to do what the majority has done: to adopt a bright-line rule to govern the incident to arrest inquiry and a case-by-case, totality of the circumstances rule to govern the exigent circumstances issue. The only question is whether it makes any sense to do so. Abolishing Ringer 's totality of the circumstances approach for one of its grounds but not for the other accomplishes nothing. The danger we are concerned with is uncertainty. The totality approach places the police in a dilemma, forcing them to risk ruining good investigations or to refrain from conducting searches they would otherwise make. Clearly, unless a clear rule is provided for both grounds on which a warrantless search might be conducted, the uncertainty has not been removed. The dilemma has not been resolved. The harm to law enforcement has not been avoided. In short, there is no principled basis for the majority's not following the underlying logic of Stroud and holding that the question of exigencies should also be governed by a bright-line rule. The majority attempts to distinguish Stroud by claiming that it rests on a concern for police officers' safety during arrests; something which purportedly is not a concern of the exigent circumstances exception. Majority, at 735. This is only half true. The Stroud court was, to judge from the opinions, primarily concerned with the uncertainty that a totality of the circumstances rule creates in the business of law enforcement. Justice Goodloe wrote: The Ringer holding makes it virtually impossible for officers to decide whether or not a warrantless search would be permissible. Weighing the totality of circumstances is too much of a burden to put on police officers who must make a decision to search with little more than a moment's reflection. As the United States Supreme Court stated in New York v. Belton, 453 U.S. 454, 458, 69 L.Ed.2d 768, 101 S.Ct. 2860 (1981), quoting LaFave, Case-by-Case Adjudication Versus Standardized Procedures: The Robinson Dilemma, 1974 Sup. Ct. Rev. 127, 142: A highly sophisticated set of rules ... requiring the drawing of subtle nuances and hairline distinctions, may be the sort of heady stuff upon which the facile minds of lawyers and judges eagerly feed, but they may be `literally impossible of application by the officer in the field.' We agree with the Supreme Court's decision to draw a clearer line to aid police enforcement, although because of our state's additional protection of privacy rights we must draw the line differently than did the United States Supreme Court. 106 Wn.2d at 151. Justice Durham expressed a concern for police officers' safety, but she also shared the view that a case-by-case rule creates practical difficulties for the police, 106 Wn.2d at 166, and that a clearer set of rules is needed to aid the police. 106 Wn.2d at 167 (Durham, J., concurring). Therefore, while the facts of Stroud presented a search incident to arrest, our decision was governed primarily by a concern which applies equally to warrantless searches made under exigent circumstances: the impossibility, from a police officer's point of view, of drawing the fine distinctions which a court applying a totality of the circumstances test will make in determining the search's validity. While we can, if we wish, read Stroud narrowly and adopt a totality of the circumstances test for the exigent circumstances leg of Ringer, it is not wise or consistent on our part to do so. We will not have relieved law enforcement of an impossible burden, as we undertook to do in Stroud. In not fulfilling that commitment, the majority has taken an unprincipled step backward.