Opinion ID: 1241125
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: prefatory remarks

Text: In my time on the Court there has not been another case before us with more far reaching consequences than this. One aspect of the appeal has to do with defendant's claim that the affidavit purporting to support the issuance of the search warrant was insufficient upon which to base the requisite finding of probable cause. I am unable to agree with the Court's conclusion that it was  which conclusion runs against prior decisions of the Court and against a well settled body of general law, as will be discussed further on. As regards this issue, the Court's opinion, while it is unsettling of the law and leads to a wrong result, affects just the particular defendant, Gomez, and he will be neither the first nor the last person who has suffered through error at trial or error on the part of an appellate court. The case goes far beyond the instant defendant, however. The Court's opinion as written goes far in aiding and abetting the deepest intrusion on Fourth Amendment rights that it will be the country's misfortune to have encountered in recent years  perhaps in all time since the nation was founded. My primary concern in this case  one which also involves an invasion of defendant's constitutional rights  is the extreme ease with which the Court adopts and approves of the newly discovered police-state doctrine which is referred to as Securing the Premises  a doctrine so new that the Court, in its opinion, recognizes the necessity for mentioning it only when circumscribed with quotation marks. Securing the Premises has not, to my knowledge, and in my opinion, heretofore received the approval of this Court. In State v. Rauch, 99 Idaho 586, 586 P.2d 671 (1978), a 1978 decision of the Court in which I participated and joined the Court's opinion, we had for our consideration only the review of a trial court order suppressing evidence for noncompliance with the Idaho knock-and-announce statutes. The trial court determination was based upon a factual finding that the prosecution had not produced any evidence of exigent circumstances which would justify the noncompliance. That evidentiary finding was found by the Court to be sustained by the appeal record, and on that basis we affirmed. A dissenting justice in that case would have held otherwise, and inserted into his opinion a quotation of remarks made by the trial court to the effect that there were exigent circumstances which gave probable cause for believing that entry was needed to secure the house and monitor the residents before the search warrant arrived to prevent removal of contraband from the house. 99 Idaho at 595, 586 P.2d at 680. It must be remembered that was not the Court's opinion. The Court's opinion in Rauch did concede to the dissent that the trial court had so remarked, again setting the same forth, and proceeding to explicitly point out that exigent circumstances, when found to exist, can allow police to enter, search, seize and arrest without complying with the warrant requirements of the United States Constitution... . 99 Idaho at 590-91, 586 P.2d at 675-76. Plainly and simply, we pointed out that evidence seized on warrantless entries will not always be suppressed, and then distinguished between such warrantless entries, on the one hand, and warrant entries without knock-and-announce compliance, on the other. We agreed with the trial court's analysis of the evidence, saying that [t]here was no urgency which justified noncompliance with the statute... . 99 Idaho at 591, 586 P.2d at 676. That was the exact issue which was there presented, and that was our holding, wherein, in Justice Donaldson's well reasoned opinion, we joined with courts which take seriously the legislature's requirement that police in making warrant entries do not, except when acting under exigent circumstances, merely break in without giving advance advice of their presence and purpose. The sentence which announced our holding contained the additional language, picked up from the trial court's twice-quoted passage, that there was probable cause to enter and secure the premises. 99 Idaho at 591, 586 P.2d at 676. In that regard, as I understood the language then, and still read it to this day, we were saying that the officers could have made a warrantless entry based upon exigent circumstances, but the type of exigent circumstances found to exist were insufficient to justify ignoring the requirements of our knock and announce statute. Whatever thoughts the trial court may have entertained in making his remarks, and whatever the other members of the Court may have considered with regard to securing the premises, it is altogether clear to me that the only issue in the case was whether or not the knock-and-announce requirements could be disregarded in making the entry which was there made. What was said about securing the premises in the Court's opinion was mere obiter, and to my mind capable only of the interpretation that the Court was gratuitously hypothesizing that a warrantless entry might have been properly made under the circumstances then and there existing. Securing the Premises was not an issue in the case. Of real pertinency to the case of this defendant is the Court's observation in Rauch, agreeing with the trial court, that sheer speculation is an insufficient premise for the exigent circumstances necessary to make an entry of a home without compliance with the statute. 99 Idaho at 591, 586 P.2d at 676. Sheer speculation is also an insufficient premise for the exigent circumstances required where constitutional prohibitions against warrantless entries are involved, my view being that the constitution is a stronger mandate than a legislative requirement. That which the Court does today is a far cry from our observations in Rauch as to the basic right to be secure in a person's home, guaranteed by the fourth amendment ... 99 Idaho at 592, 586 P.2d at 677; [t]he very sanctity of the home ... 99 Idaho at 593, 586 P.2d at 678; the fact that `[s]uch action invades the precious interest of privacy summed up in the ancient adage that a man's house is his castle.' Miller v. United States, 357 U.S. 301, 307, 78 S.Ct. 1190, 1194, 2 L.Ed.2d 1332 ... 99 Idaho at 592, 586 P.2d at 677; the fact that [t]he exclusionary rule has been the basic guarantor of freedom from illegal police action... . id. ; and the fact that `[e]very householder, the good and the bad, the guilty and the innocent, is entitled to the protection designed to secure the common interest against unlawful invasion of the house.' 99 Idaho at 594, 586 P.2d at 679 (quoting Miller, supra, 357 U.S. at 313-14, 78 S.Ct. at 1197-1198). Rauch was a well reasoned and well articulated decision of this Court, and represented a significant bulwark against unlawful intrusions into the privacy of the home. Yet, according to my recollection, it went unnoticed and unheralded  which is unusual in view of the media's general concern with constitutional rights, especially those engendered by the First Amendment. Although there was a vigorous dissent in the disposition made of that case, in which another justice joined, still the media apparently believed the case of little importance. So, other than that it was important to that particular defendant and to the state's police officers, the case caused little stir. At about the same time the Court also split three-two on another case involving the rights of Idaho people to protect themselves in their homes and while traveling on the highways in their automobiles, motor homes, and other vehicles. In State v. McNary, 100 Idaho 244, 596 P.2d 417 (1979), the Court expanded I.C. § 18-3302 beyond its plain language, and held that the statute prohibited the concealed keeping of weapons within homes which were within city limits or within vehicles operating on public highways. Despite the importance of the issue, and the split in the Court, nothing was written or said about the case and it is not known to this day if the legislature showed any concern for the strained interpretation of its statute. Such recollections put me in mind of the remarks of Justice Byron White of the United States Supreme Court, given at the State Bar Convention in Sun Valley in July 1979, to the effect that although that Court's opinions were out, the debate still raged on as to the validity of the varying views espoused in the various opinions just then handed down. I have thought, and continue to believe, it unfortunate that after the members of this Court struggle mightily with some of the difficult issues with which we are faced, no one feels free or motivated to either assail or defend the direction in which the Court has moved. A recent ray of light, and one which may support the extra effort required by my extreme concern and deep involvement in this particular controversy, was some interest in Fourth Amendment rights expressed by a local paper in just this last year. Of great encouragement to those who would struggle to protect those rights was the rather singular fact that the comment, in the form of an editorial, saw a recent United States Supreme Court opinion [1] as running counter to the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Noting that past Supreme Court rulings have curbed police excess, the editorial went on to say that the recent ruling quite obviously showed a change of view in that Court, and that [t]he court was unmindful of the potential dangers of the ruling..., the circumstances of which it took the pains to lay out to its readers. The editorial concluded with a message which compels me to continue with renewed vigor my sworn obligation to enforce the Fourth Amendment rights which I see being violated today: The highest court in the land told police and prosecutors that it has no aversion to the most repugnant police practices as long as the evidence that is obtained is used against defendants who don't happen to own a briefcase that is stolen, a residence that is burgled or a car that is illegally searched. But the court ignored the rights of the party who owns the briefcase, residence or car. It also ignored excesses by the police and sent a confusing and dangerous message to police agencies.  (Emphasis added.) Fourth Amendment rights are not the particular concern of judges and lawyers, but are and should be the concern of all the people of this country  in which regard it is gratifying to see those rights debated and argued, whether the views espoused be pro or con. II.