Opinion ID: 1459439
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Public Establishments

Text: We are not convinced by defendants' argument that they had the same right to enter the club as any other patron. Although defendants would have been free to accept the open public invitation that Club Retro gives to every patron, enter Club Retro, and observe the club and persons therein, defendants' entry and search of Club Retro and its owners, employees, and patrons far exceeded the scope of any public invitation. In Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S.Ct. 424, 17 L.Ed.2d 312 (1966), the Supreme Court held that [a] government agent, in the same manner as a private person, may accept an invitation to do business and may enter upon the premises for the very purposes contemplated by the occupant. Id. at 211, 87 S.Ct. 424. This is not an unbounded grant of authority, however: this does not mean that, whenever entry is obtained by invitation and the locus is characterized as a place of business, an agent is authorized to conduct a general search for incriminating materials .... Id. (citing Gouled v. United States, 255 U.S. 298, 41 S.Ct. 261, 65 L.Ed. 647 (1921)); accord State v. Lund, 409 So.2d 569, 570 (La.1982) (upholding an arrest where officers entered a club and only then became inadvertent witnesses to criminal conduct). The principal case relied on by defendants, State v. Dobard, 824 So.2d 1127 (La.2002), describes some boundaries and supports our conclusion. In Dobard, police officers entered a bar wearing plainclothes for the purpose of conducting a vice check. Id. at 1129. After announcing their presence and approaching a patron, that patron acted suspiciously by visibly discarding an object in his possession and retreating from the officers. Id. The officers seized the patron and retrieved the object, which they later confirmed to be crack cocaine. Id. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the resulting arrest: the officers had specific, articulable facts justifying the seizure of the defendant. Id. at 1133. As permitted by Lewis, the officers' presence in the bar was constitutional: a police officer may accept a bar's invitation to the public and enter for any reason or no reason. Dobard, 824 So.2d at 1132. [T]he officers were in a place they had a right to be and possessed the same right as any citizen to approach an individual and engage him in conversation. Id. The Louisiana court, however, narrowly limited the scope of this holding. It held that the officers had no authority whatsoever to enter a bar and search its patrons for narcotics. Id. at 1131. Had the officers been searching defendant's person for narcotics based solely on the fact it [sic] was conducting a so-called `vice check,' then any contraband recovered would clearly be inadmissible in a subsequent prosecution. Id. It also noted that the officers had not drawn their weapons, physically contacted defendant, ordered or signaled him to stop, or otherwise asserted any official authority over him when he panicked and discarded the contraband. Id. at 1132-33 (citations omitted). Thus, accepting a public invitation is permissible, but, absent cause, does not justify searches once inside the commercial establishment. It is clear from these qualifications that defendants in this case could not reasonably rely on Dobard to justify the scope of Operation Retro-Fit. Taking plaintiffs' factual allegations as true, defendants did not enter Club Retro as would a typical patron; instead, they chose to project official authority by entering with weapons drawn in a S.W.A.T. team raid. They lacked any particularized suspicion or probable cause when they subsequently searched Club Retro, its attic, and the separate apartment and seized and searched all of its patrons and employees. Thus, defendants' entry and search was not a reasonable acceptance of Club Retro's invitation to the public. Any other conclusion would be an invitation for S.W.A.T. team raids by law enforcement officers of any business that is open to the public and would severely undermine the Fourth Amendment protections afforded to owners of commercial premises.