Opinion ID: 2607891
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the search and arrest of defendant.

Text: The fourth amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,    Article I, section 5 of the Hawaii Constitution is similarly worded. The United States Supreme Court has held that all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court. Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1691, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961). This exclusionary rule is premised on the policy that if the police cannot use such evidence to obtain convictions, illegal police practices will be deterred. It is further supported by the policy of making the agents of the state perform their tasks within the law regardless of the lawless tactics of those they seek to bring to justice. Mapp v. Ohio, supra, at 656, 659, 81 S.Ct. 1684. At the outset the state would have us disregard the question of the constitutionality of the search and seizure, arguing that the defendant in this case has no standing to raise the objection. Relying on Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960), it argues that the defendant was on the grounds as a trespasser and had no rights. We do not agree. The state's argument confuses two very different points: they are (1) the question of standing and (2) the question of what is an unreasonable search and seizure. See State v. Matias, 51 Haw. 62, 64, 451 P.2d 257, 259 (1969). The short answer to the question of standing in this case is that the state cannot charge a person with possession and then deny that person his remedy at law to object to the search and seizure of that which the state says is his. The state cannot have it both ways. Mr. Justice Frankfurter put it aptly in Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 263-264, 80 S.Ct. 725, 732, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960): The prosecution here thus subjected the defendant to the penalties meted out to one in lawless possession while refusing him the remedies designed for one in that situation. It is not consonant with the amenities, to put it mildly, of the administration of criminal justice to sanction such squarely contradictory assertions of power by the Government. Moreover, the defendant was the victim of the search and seizure as it was directed against him. Jones, supra at 261, 80 S.Ct. 725. Thus we conclude that standing exists in this case. The more difficult problem not squarely raised by this appeal is whether the doctrine of standing, which limits the exclusionary rule, has any place in the law of Hawaii. This we do not decide today. [1]
If the defendant has standing to raise the question of the validity of the search, we must now ask whether there was a reasonable expectation of freedom from governmental intrusion by those against whom the search was directed so that the safeguards of the fourth amendment are applicable. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967). The group of people stood between the two apartment buildings in the common passageway which was private property, although not theirs. While the space between the apartments was open to the plain view of the officer, it was not open to unlimited governmental intrusions such as the search which ensued. In State v. Matias, 51 Haw. 62, 451 P.2d 257 (1969) an overnight guest of a tenant was granted a right to privacy on the premises of his host's apartment even though his host consented to a search. In that case we affirmed the broad proposition that a person has a `halo' of privacy wherever he goes and can invoke a protectable right to privacy wherever he may legitimately be and reasonably expect freedom from governmental intrusion. Id. at 65-66, 451 P.2d at 259. We relied heavily on the statement in Mancusi v. DeForte, 392 U.S. 364, 368, 88 S.Ct. 2120, 2123, 20 L.Ed.2d 1154 (1968) that: The Court's recent decision in Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, also makes it clear that capacity to claim the protection of the Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the area was one in which there was a reasonable expectation of freedom from governmental intrusion. Accordingly, the test is not whether the members of the group in the passageway were technically trespassers, licensees, or invitees. It is one of reasonable expectations of privacy. Every individual has expectations of privacy with regard to his person wherever he may go, be it a public park or a private place; yet this is not so with regard to places where an individual happens to be. The place must be of such a character as to give rise reasonably to these expectations of privacy. Since the passageway was located on private property, the group which met and socialized there had every expectation of freedom from governmental intrusion as to the premises and the protection of the fourth amendment therefore applies.
Precisely because [t]he right of privacy was deemed too precious to entrust to the discretion of those whose job is the detection of crime and the arrest of criminals, [2] it is well settled that a warrant must be obtained before a search may be conducted unless there are exigent circumstances [3] or the search is incident to an arrest. [4] In the present case there were no special or exigent circumstances such as those mentioned in Johnson, supra 333 U.S. at 15, 68 S.Ct. 367, which would have justified a warrantless search. The officer admitted this much on cross-examination. Furthermore, even if the arrest was for probable cause, [5] the search does not meet the test enunciated in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969) for a search incident to an arrest. As the court said in Chimel, supra : There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the arrestee's person and the area `within his immediate control'  construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence. Chimel, supra at 763, 89 S.Ct. at 2040, makes it abundantly clear that this is the area within the arrestee's reach and not, as the state has argued in the present case, ten feet from the arrestee in and about the washing machine where the narcotics were discovered. Exceptions to the constitutional requirement of a warrant must be strictly observed so that in practice they do not swallow up the requirement. We conclude that the defendant had standing to assert his reasonable expectations of privacy, that the warrantless search was not justified by exigent circumstances, and that it was not incident to an arrest. A search warrant was therefore required and the failure of the police to obtain one requires that the evidence seized be suppressed and the decision of the trial court be reversed. The reversal of a conviction on these grounds is mandated by the state and federal constitutions as the result of improper police practices in failing to respect the constitutional rights of private citizens. It is the fault of the police, not the courts, that the defendant may go free.