Opinion ID: 4419429
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: public arrest

Text: In our view, Santana is distinguishable from the instant case. Unlike the defendant in Santana, in this case defendant was not “exposed to public view, speech, hearing, and touch, as if she had been standing completely outside her house.” Id. at 42. Defendant was never in a public place and possessed a reasonable expectation of privacy inside her home that she maintained throughout the encounter. The lower courts erred by holding otherwise. Initially, we do not agree with the Court of Appeals’ conclusion that defendant “went further” than the Santana defendant to expose herself to the public by approaching the doorway and “extending her arm beyond the threshold” to retrieve her identification. Hammerlund, unpub op at 5. The Santana defendant stood squarely in the middle of her doorway. Here, the circuit court found only that defendant “reached out of her door” to retrieve her property. According to the record, all that breached the threshold was some portion of defendant’s arm or hand.6 6 Testimony concerning how far defendant reached out or how much—if any—of her body was exposed to the public is ambiguous at best. When asked if he went inside to grab her 11 But the fact that some portion of defendant’s arm or hand crossed the threshold does not tell us the constitutional significance of this fact. Should we consider her to be in public if her whole arm was outside the threshold? What if it was only her wrist or a couple of her fingers? Fortunately, an attempt to determine how far defendant extended her arm or hand over the threshold and what that might mean is an unnecessary exercise.7 Our Fourth Amendment analysis does not focus on such arbitrary calculations; our focus remains on determining whether a person sought to preserve her constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy. See Katz v United States, 389 US 347, 351; 88 S Ct 507; 19 L Ed 2d 576 (1967). It is beyond clear that defendant had a reasonable constitutional expectation of privacy within her home. Payton, 445 US at 587 (“Freedom from intrusion into the home or dwelling is the archetype of the privacy protection secured by the Fourth Amendment.”) (quotation marks and citation omitted). Answering a knock at the door or speaking with arm, Officer Staman replied, “I stood on the outside of the porch when I initially grabbed it, and she had pulled away, which caused me to have to grab it again . . . .” On crossexamination, he stated: “I reached out to give her the I.D., and she reached out to grab it from me. That’s when I grabbed ahold of her wrist.” When asked where the “grab” took place, Officer Staman said, “I waited until her hand reached out to mine, so I didn’t reach in to give it to her, I just held it out and she reached out to grab it from me.” He testified that he did not think his hand “was ever inside the house . . . .” While the officer’s testimony does not illuminate how far defendant reached out to retrieve her identification, we cannot say that the trial court’s finding that defendant “reached out of her door” was clearly erroneous. People v Custer, 465 Mich 319, 325; 630 NW2d 870 (2001). 7 See Sparing v Village of Olympia Fields, 266 F3d 684, 689 (CA 7, 2001) (“Splitting fractions of an inch can be a very treacherous endeavor, producing arbitrary results. But we need not pull out our rulers and begin to measure. Under the Fourth Amendment, the point must be identified by inquiry into reasonable expectations of privacy.”). 12 officers does not destroy an occupant’s right to maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy from unreasonable intrusion. Kentucky v King, 563 US 452, 470; 131 S Ct 1849; 179 L Ed 2d 865 (2011) (“[E]ven if an occupant chooses to open the door and speak with the officers, the occupant need not allow the officers to enter the premises and may refuse to answer any questions at any time.”).8 The only question is whether defendant’s expectation of privacy remained intact when some portion of her hand or arm crossed the threshold to retrieve her property or if, by doing so, she somehow surrendered that expectation. The lower courts compared this case to Santana to conclude that defendant did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy because she exposed herself to public arrest. See Hammerlund, unpub op at 5. Santana is distinguishable. In that case, the defendant was voluntarily standing in the middle of her open doorway before the police encounter even began; by doing so, she exposed herself to the public “as if she had been standing completely outside” and she did not have any reasonable expectation of privacy from the very beginning of the encounter. Santana, 427 US at 42. In contrast, defendant began this encounter inside her home—inside her bedroom—emerging only when she and her 8 The lower courts did not conclude that defendant exposed herself to public arrest by coming to the door or by talking to Officer Staman while standing 15 to 20 feet back from the door. Rather, the lower courts concluded that defendant subjected herself to public arrest only by extending her hand beyond the threshold when retrieving her identification. See Hammerlund, unpub op at 5 (“[D]efendant’s act of reaching out to grab her identification . . . caused her to . . . expos[e] herself to a public arrest . . . .”). Accordingly, we need not decide whether her mere presence and interaction with Officer Staman at the door, and whether she did so voluntarily or as a result of coercion or deception, constituted exposure to public arrest. 13 roommate were threatened with arrest, and then remaining 15 to 20 feet away from the doorway. When asked to provide her driver’s license, she had her roommate pass it to Officer Staman while she remained away from the door. Defendant manifested an intent to stay inside, and Officer Staman was aware of that intention. Given her actions, she did not voluntarily and knowingly expose herself to the public as if she had been standing outside her house. Defendant’s actions made clear that she was carefully preserving her expectation of privacy. Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s application of Santana to this case because it reasoned that defendant exposed herself to public arrest by approaching the door and reaching out to retrieve her identification. Hammerlund, unpub op at 5. But there is a fundamental difference between the reasonable expectation of privacy of a person who voluntarily stands in an open doorway and the reasonable expectation of privacy of a person who remains inside the confines of her home, approaching the doorway only briefly and momentarily breaking the plane of the doorway with some portion of her arm or hand.9 In other words, defendant did not surrender her 9 See United States v Flowers, 336 F3d 1222, 1227 (CA 10, 2003), holding that the defendant was not subject to public arrest under Payton and Kirk and distinguishing Santana: The record shows that at the time of Flowers’ arrest, and from the time that night at which the police officers first came to Flowers, Flowers was inside his home. Although Flowers put his arm and hand outside his house by extending them through the panel opening, the rest of his body did not cross his threshold. We believe that Flowers did not lose “the constitutional protection afforded to the individual’s interest in the privacy of his own home,” Payton, [445 US at 588,] by this limited exposure. Rather, Flowers 14 expectation of privacy because she did not expose herself to public view, speech, hearing, and touch as if she had been standing completely outside. Santana, 427 US at 42. Defendant manifested an intent to remain fully within her home by carefully standing several feet away from the door. She continued to manifest this intent when she approached the doorway briefly and only broke the plane of the doorway with some portion of her arm or hand. We think that society would recognize defendant’s behavior as preserving a reasonable expectation of privacy. In fact, we would venture that what society would not view as reasonable is exactly what occurred in this case—that a person suspected of a minor misdemeanor could be subjected to a warrantless arrest inside her home in the middle of the night. To recap, defendant’s expectation of privacy within her home was reasonable, and her action of reaching out over the threshold and retrieving her identification did not relinquish that reasonable expectation. Defendant was not exposed to public arrest, and accordingly, Santana is inapplicable to the facts of this case.