Opinion ID: 2062916
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the search of the bedroom

Text: Having concluded that the warrantless entry to arrest Harris was lawful, we must now consider whether the search of Harris's bedroom was also justified in connection with that arrest. In general, where police have lawfully entered a residence to effect an arrest, warrantless, nonconsensual searches of the premises are reasonable in four situations. First, until they have located the suspect they seek, the police may search the premises generally for the purpose of apprehending the suspect. See Buie, 494 U.S. at 332-33, 110 S.Ct. at 1097; Hayden, 387 U.S. at 299, 87 S.Ct. at 1646; United States v. Manley, 632 F.2d 978, 986 (2d Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1112, 101 S.Ct. 922, 66 L.Ed.2d 841 (1981). Once the suspect has been found, however, that rationale for searching the premises disappears. See Buie, 494 U.S. at 333, 110 S.Ct. at 1097; Brooks, 367 A.2d at 1305. Second, in the course of arresting the suspect, the police may search the area within the arrestee's immediate control to prevent the arrestee from grabbing a weapon or evidence. See Chimel, 395 U.S. at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040. Third, even after the arrestee has been seized, the police may in certain situations also undertake a protective sweep of the premises to protect against the danger of an attack from an accomplice while they are completing the arrest procedure. See Buie, 494 U.S. at 334, 110 S.Ct. at 1098; Earle v. United States, 612 A.2d 1258, 1264-65 (D.C.1992). Finally, both before and after the arrest a further search of the premises  limited in scope  may be justified by emergency or exigent circumstances, e.g., a reasonable belief that a person may be in need of aid or that important evidence may be destroyed or removed. [12] See Michigan v. Tyler 436 U.S. 499, 510, 98 S.Ct. 1942, 1950, 56 L.Ed.2d 486 (1978) (investigation of causes of fire); Earle, 612 A.2d at 1263-64 (search for possible shooting victims); Clark v. United States, 593 A.2d 186, 196-199 (D.C.1991) (same); Sturdivant v. United States, 551 A.2d 1338 (D.C.1988) (limited search for murder weapon justified by inherent danger of sawed-off shotgun and possibility that other household members would use or destroy it), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 956, 110 S.Ct. 370, 107 L.Ed.2d 356 (1989). See generally Thompson v. Louisiana, 469 U.S. 17, 22, 105 S.Ct. 409, 412, 83 L.Ed.2d 246 (1984) (warrantless search of premises under emergency exception limited to items in plain view during victim-or-suspect search); Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 392-93, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 2413, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) (same); Douglas-Bey v. United States, 490 A.2d 1137, 1138-39 (D.C.1985) (same). Clearly, neither of the first two grounds applies to the search of Harris's bedroom, because Harris was already in custody in the apartment hallway when the police entered his bedroom, and because the bedroom was manifestly beyond his immediate control as he stood in the hallway. The government, therefore, urges us to uphold the search either as a protective sweep or on the basis of exigent circumstances.
In Buie, the Supreme Court defined a protective sweep as a quick and limited search of premises, incident to an arrest and conducted to protect the safety of police officers or others. 494 U.S. at 327, 110 S.Ct. at 1094. The Court explained the police basis for allowing such a search in the following terms: The risk of danger in the context of an arrest in the home is as great as, if not greater than, it is in an on-the-street or roadside investigatory encounter. A Terry or Long frisk [ see Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 [88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889] (1968); Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032 [103 S.Ct. 3469, 77 L.Ed.2d 1201] (1983)] occurs before a police-citizen confrontation has escalated to the point of arrest. A protective sweep, in contrast, occurs as an adjunct to the serious step of taking a person into custody for the purpose of prosecuting him for a crime. Moreover, unlike an encounter on the street or along a highway, an in-home arrest puts the officer at the disadvantage of being on his adversary's turf. An ambush in a confined setting of unknown configuration is more to be feared than it is in open, more familiar surroundings. Buie, 494 U.S. at 333, 110 S.Ct. at 1098. The Court then went on to hold that two types of protective sweeps are reasonable and lawful under the Fourth Amendment. First, as an incident to the arrest [police] officers could, as a precautionary matter and without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, look in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched. Id. at 334, 110 S.Ct. at 1098 (emphasis added). This limited type of protective sweep of spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest resembles the search of areas within the arrestee's immediate control sanctioned in Chimel, in that the police may make both types of searches as a routine precautionary procedure, without any particularized, reasonable suspicion. [13] In either case the exception accounts for a police officer's natural  and reasonable  instinct for an immediate, narrow search for self-protection from the arrestee ( Chimel ) or from any possible third party who could fire a weapon or otherwise accost the officer at close range ( Buie ). Second, police may undertake a broader search of the home, i.e., beyond immediately adjoining spaces, when they are aware of articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene. [14] Buie, 494 U.S. at 334, 110 S.Ct. at 1098. Like the pat-down for weapons approved in Terry or the search of the automobile passenger compartment sanctioned in Long, this second kind of protective sweep in the home can only be justified by a reasonable, particularized suspicion. See Buie, 494 U.S. at 334 & n. 2, 110 S.Ct. at 1098 & n. 2. See generally Cuthbertson, supra note 13, at 175-76. We believe that the brief search of Harris's bedroom was lawful under the first of these two categories. Although the Buie court did not define further what it meant by the term spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched, other courts applying Buie have interpreted this phrase to include rooms that are directly adjacent to the place of arrest. [15] In this case, although the motions judge made no findings on this issue, uncontradicted testimony at the suppression hearing clearly indicated that Harris's bedroom opened directly onto the interior hall where he was held, frisked, and arrested. Indeed, the police first encountered Harris as he was leaving this bedroom. Consequently, consistent with caselaw from other jurisdictions, we conclude that Harris's bedroom definitely falls within Buie 's first category of spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest that police may briefly search, even without reasonable suspicion, as a routine safety precaution. It is true that the police had no actual evidence that a possible attacker would be in this room. They had already apprehended Harris himself, and there was no evidence that any accomplices had been involved in the Park Road shooting. The only indication that anyone else might have been there was the thump heard by Officer Bailey, but this had occurred before Harris had left the bedroom, and Bailey attributed the noise to Harris's dropping a gun. Nevertheless, even though the police may not have had any factual basis for believing that anyone else was in the bedroom, they were entitled under Buie to make a protective sweep of the room as a reasonable, general precaution because it immediately adjoined the place of arrest. [16]
Where police have grounds for conducting a protective sweep, it must be narrowly confined to a cursory visual inspection of those places in which a person might be hiding. Buie, 494 U.S. at 327, 110 S.Ct. at 1094. Thus, a valid protective sweep may not be transformed into a full-scale search for evidence. Id. at 335, 110 S.Ct. at 1099. [A] warrantless search must be `strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its initiation'.... Mincey, 437 U.S. at 393, 98 S.Ct. at 2413 (quoting Terry, 392 U.S. at 26, 88 S.Ct. at 1882). However, evidence discovered in plain view during the course of a valid, properly limited protective sweep may be seized lawfully. See Earle, 612 A.2d at 1265 (citing Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 467-68, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2038-39, 29 L.Ed.2d 564 (1971)). See generally Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 110 S.Ct. 2301, 110 L.Ed.2d 112 (1990). In this case, the motions judge found that an officer entering Harris's bedroom saw an ammunition clip on a book shelf and two guns between the bed and the wall. Although the judge did not specifically find that these objects were in plain view, the supporting record clearly indicates that the weapons and ammunition were readily visible to police as they checked to make sure that no one else was in the room. Detective Sitek testified that he saw a separation of the bed from the wall, that he thought there could be somebody hiding back there, and that when he went to look he saw a pistol. Officer Bailey specifically testified that the pistol and the Tec-9 automatic weapon were in plain view once he walked up to the bed in Harris's room and that he did not have to move anything to see them. Thus, the record demonstrates that (1) the scope of the search of Harris's bedroom was no broader than necessary to assure that there was no one else in the room and (2) the police discovered the weapons and the ammunition clip in plain view in the course of that search. [17] Having arrived at this conclusion, we need not consider the government's alternative contention that the search of Harris's bedroom can also be justified on the ground of exigent circumstances. In any case, the officers' testimony clearly indicated that, in undertaking the search of the bedroom, it was their safety that was uppermost in their minds, rather than the danger that evidence might be destroyed or that weapons left on the premises might harm others. That testimony conforms to the Buie exception.