Court Opinion

ID: 9675371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:51:17.539373+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:33.745405
License: Public Domain

DROWOTA, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I am in full agreement with the well reasoned and well researched opinion of the Court of Criminal Appeals. The cardinal issue on appeal, one which has not been previously addressed by this Court, is whether police may rely on exigent circumstances to support a war-rantless search when the exigency has been created by the action of the officers themselves. The Court of Criminal Appeals held that “Virtually every court that has addressed this question has held that the seizure of evidence under such circumstances violates the Fourth Amendment.” *838Judge Daughtrey, writing for a unanimous Court, concluded that the police conduct in this case [manufacturing the exigent circumstances] was unconstitutional. I feel the majority opinion of this Court erodes the constitutional protections provided by the Fourth Amendment. By creating their own exigent circumstances the police have established a dangerous precedent allowing them to circumvent the judicial process in dispensing with the judgment of a neutral, detached magistrate.
On May 8, when the metro vice officer confirmed the informant’s reliability, he had sufficient probable cause to secure a search warrant for the Hendrix house. The officer’s personal surveillance of the residence over the next several days further verified drug trafficking at the residence. On May 15, it was clear that sufficient probable cause existed to support the issuance of a warrant. Yet, instead of submitting the information they had gathered to a magistrate, the police deliberately decided to bypass the warrant requirement and flush the evidence into the open with the “phone rip-off.” The Court of Criminal Appeals emphasize that there had been a deliberate unjustifiable delay in seeking a search warrant and that under those circumstances the government cannot be allowed to rely on an expected exigency to avoid the inconvenience of obtaining a search warrant. The heart of the Court’s ruling, however, was that the police themselves had actually contrived the exigent circumstances justifying the warrantless search and seizure.
The majority opinion indicates that “perhaps the results would be different” had the officers in this case, after a delay in seeking a warrant, made a subsequent war-rantless entry of the Hendrix residence [rather than the vehicle] based on an artificially created exigency contrived by the police. The Court of Criminal Appeals opinion rejected the state’s attempt to justify the warrantless action by police on the basis of the fact that it involved a vehicle and not the search of a residence. The Court stated:
“As the United States Supreme Court has noted, ‘[t]he word “automobile” is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears.’ Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 461-62 [91 S.Ct. 2022, 2035-36, 29 L.Ed.2d 564] (1971). The search of the Hendrix and Bradshaw vehicles and seizure of items from them resulted directly from impermissible police activity in creating an artificial exigency involving the Hendrix residence. The possibility that the occupants of the house would flee, carrying evidence outside the house with them, was not only a foreseeable result of the ‘phone rip-off,’ it was also the very result the officers hoped to produce when they decided to intervene directly in events rather than present their case to a magistrate and request a warrant. There are no ‘countervailing factors’ evident — no indication prior to the police telephone call that those inside the house knew they were being watched, no suggestion that evidence was in danger of being removed or destroyed, and no proof that the suspects were attempting to escape police detection. [Citations omitted.] ... The occupants did not leave the scene in the Lincoln in the natural flow of events, but only as the result of police action. [Citation omitted.] Moreover, the police testified that they stopped Bradshaw as a direct consequence of his presence at the scene of the ‘telephone rip-off.’ ”
I agree with the Court of Criminal Appeals that but for the telephone call none of the evidence retrieved would have been in the vehicles where it was found by the police. But for the telephone call, none of the defendants stopped would have been where they were when stopped.
The Court of Criminal Appeals concluded by stating:
“Like the court in Hardwick v. State, [149 Ga.App. 291], 254 S.E.2d 384, 387 (Ga.App.1979), we do not ‘inten[d] by this opinion to place more roadblocks in the way of law enforcement officers attempting to perform their duties.’ But, also like the Hardwick court, we cannot condone the ‘erosion, by way of subterfuge, of constitutionally protected rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures .... ’ Id. As one of our sister *839courts put it, ‘[t]o approve the consequences of such [police activity as this] would render fourth amendment protections vulnerable to possibly even more imaginative government-created exigencies and quickly render the warrant requirement a nullity.’ People v. Wilson, [86 Ill.App.3d 637, 42 Ill.Dec. 279] 408 N.E.2d 988, 992 (Ill.App.1980). And, finally, like the court in Latham v. Sullivan, 295 N.W.2d 472, 478 (Iowa App. 1980), we conclude that ‘the appropriate rule to be applied in such a situation is that the State may not profit by an officer’s choice to forego the constitutional process by attempting to create an exigency by his own actions.’ ”
I concur in the holding of the Court of Criminal Appeals that the seizure of the evidence that led to the conviction of the defendants in this case violated the requirements of the Fourth Amendment.