Court Opinion

ID: 9545911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:22:01.607195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:15:44.913392
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OF
LUM, J.
The majority today upholds the warrantless seizure of a handgun from a car parked on a public street at 2:00 a.m. as reasonable and therefore not violative of the fourth amendment’s proscription against unreasonable searches and seizures. A review of the pertinent facts and controlling case law, however, convinces me that the requisite exigent circumstances justifying abrogation of the fourth amendment’s warrant requirement were not present on the night in question. I therefore respectfully dissent from this part of its opinion.
The United States Supreme Court, interpreting the fourth amendment in Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523 (1967), clearly stated that “except in certain carefully defined classes of *144cases, a search of private property without proper consent is ‘unreasonable’ unless it has been authorized by a valid search warrant.” Id. at 528-29. One of these “carefully defined classes of cases” is the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement as applied to automobiles. This exception, first articulated in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132 (1925), evolved from the recognition that the automobile’s inherent mobility and exposure increased the risk that an implicated vehicle and its contents may flee the jurisdiction before a warrant to secure the automobile or to seize its contents could be obtained. See generally Williamson, The Supreme Court, Warrantless Searches, and Exigent Circumstances, 31 Okla. L. Rev. 110, 128-38 (1978).
Since Carroll, numerous United States Supreme Court and Hawaii cases have developed and refined the exigent circumstances exception as applied to automobiles as different factual situations presented new opportunities to construe and apply the exception. See, e.g., Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971); Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42 (1970); State v. Agnasan, 62 Haw. 252, 614 P.2d 393 (1980); State v. Elliott, 61 Haw. 492, 605 P.2d 930 (1980). And while, as the majority notes, the Supreme Court in these subsequent cases “has recognized significant differences between motor vehicles- and other property which permit warrantless searches of automobiles in circumstances in which warrantless searches would not be reasonable in other contexts,” United States v. Chadwick, 433 U.S. 1, 12 (1977), the Supreme Court has also cautioned that “[t]he word ‘automobile’ is not a talisman in whose presence the Fourth Amendment fades away and disappears.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra at 461-62. The exigent circumstances exception, as applied to this particular factual pattern, continues to maintain its justification on the presence of truly exigent circumstances caused by the fleeting nature of the target, which I find from the record were absent in the present case.
The majority invokes the language of United States v. Connolly, 479 F.2d 930 (9th Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 897, to set the present standard that must be met in order for a case to fall under the exigent circumstances exception as applied to automobiles. The court of appeals in Connolly, construing the exception, required at a minimum a showing “that at the time of the warrantless search the officers had reason to believe that the mobility or exposure of the car *145made it impracticable to seek a warrant.” Id. at 935; State v. Elliott, supra at 496, 605 P.2d at-933. This belief, however, may not be merely “a generalized fear that an unknown person will move the vehicle or destroy evidence in it.” Connolly, supra at 935, citing Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra. The police must be able to “articulate specific grounds for believing that a known accomplice, acquaintance, or, in unusual cases such as United States v. Cohn, [472 F.2d 290 (9th Cir. 1973)],1 an unknown person passing by is likely to move the vehicle or destroy evidence within it before a warrant could be secured,” id., before a warrantless search based on probable cause will be permitted. See State v. Dorson, 62 Haw. 377, 388, 615 P.2d 740, 748 (1980); State v. Dias, 62 Haw. 52, 57, 609 P.2d 637, 640-41 (1980).
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Connolly upheld the warrantless search of an automobile conducted subsequent to defendant’s arrest. Government agents, believing defendant to be transporting cocaine in his car, arrested defendant after he parked his vehicle on a public street. A warrantless search of the car ensued, revealing a paper bag containing four ounces of cocaine which had been hidden under the front seat. Defendant had had no prior knowledge that he. was under investigation which might have prompted him to dispose of the evidence earlier. Once under arrest, defendant had no access to his car. Relying primarily on Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra,2 however, the court held that the requisite *146exigent circumstances existed because the agents had had specific reason to believe that a confederate or acquaintance might return to move the car or remove the contraband.
This court relied heavily on the Connolly holding in State v. Elliott, supra, wherein we found sufficient exigency from the facts to uphold the warrantless search of defendant’s vehicle. As in Connolly, defendant had been under surveillance for involvement in drug transactions. His arrest occurred as he was leaving his apartment building subsequent to making a sale to an informant. Aware of the police officers’ presence around him and near his car, defendant threw a bag containing marijuana into the car and locked the door. Defendant was then arrested. Police procured the keys to the car from a female acquaintance of defendant and immediately unlocked the car to secure the bag. Sustaining the trial court’s determination that the bag had been lawfully seized, we emphasized the following facts: (1) contraband was involved, and the police clearly had probable cause to believe that the bag contained contraband; (2) the bag was plainly visible from outside the vehicle, even though its contents were not; (3) the car was parked in an open apartment parking area; (4) the activity of defendant and the police had focused public attention on the car and the bag; and (5) others were present who were involved in or had knowledge of the drug dealings and thus “might have had more than a passing interest in the vehicle and its contents,” 61 Haw. at 497, 605 P.2d at 934. We placed particular emphasis on the fact that defendant’s likely confederates were not in custody, and that many others in the nearby apartment complexes who might have had an interest in the bag may have witnessed the arrest and activity near the car, leaving police no alternative but to search the car on the spot. Cf. State v. Dorson, supra (warrantless search of house and seizure of marijuana therein held unreasonable since defendant was arrested far from home out of public view and no confederates were alerted to the possibility of a search).
In contrast, the facts of this case do not rise to the same level of exigency to justify police action without prior judicial approval. Unlike Elliott, there is no evidence of police conduct or actions by defendant that might have focused any attention whatsoever on defendant’s car, which was parked a good distance away from the scene of the arrest. Again unlike Elliott, the firearm in the present case was only barely protruding from under the front seat, and *147would have been visible to the passerby only if he were using a flashlight and consciously searching the automobile’s interior. In fact, the police themselves would have had no knowledge of the handgun’s existence were it not for the telephone call they received informing them of the possibility of the same. Finally, defendant had not been acting in concert with others who might have had sufficient motivation to remove the weapon or the car. Defendant himself remained in police custody once arrested, unable to raise the requisite amount of bail, and therefore had no opportunity to gain access to his vehicle.
In. short, the police, at the time of their warrantless seizure of the handgun, lacked specific, articulable grounds for believing that there was a foreseeable risk of the car’s or weapon’s removal before a search warrant could be obtained. That defendant’s car was parked in an area generally regarded as a “high crime spot,” when viewed in the context of the other facts, amounts to nothing more than support for a generalized fear that an unknown person may come along and take the evidence, which Coolidge strictly forbids. The police were thus bound to comply with the fourth amendment’s command that a warrant be secured prior to the seizure of defendant’s private property. The fact that defendant’s arrest occurred in the early morning hours, making it inconvenient to secure a warrant,, carries little weight in this jurisdiction as a reason to by-pass the fourth amendment. See State v. Texeira, 62 Haw. 44, 51, 609 P.2d 131, 136 (1980).

 The. court of appeals in United States v. Cohn, supra, upheld a warrantless search of an automobile as reasonable under the exigent circumstances exception, on the grounds that (1) the car had been seen at the home of a known drug trafficker, and was subject to being moved again without warning; (2) part of a brick of marijuana was protruding from the car’s front seat; and (3) a very strong odor of marijuana was coming out of a half-opened window on the passenger’s side of the car.

 In Coolidge v. New Hampshire, supra, the Supreme Court held the automobile exception to be “simply irrelevant” to the facts before it, emphasizing (1) the suspect in the case knew beforehand that he was under investigation for a crime and had ample opportunity to destroy evidence; (2) during the arrest, the suspect had no access to the automobile; (3) the vehicle was not parked in such a place or manner as to attract undue attention; (4) the search did not involve contraband, stolen goods or weapons; and (5) there were no known confederates likely to remove the evidence. The Connolly court relied on these factors to set the parameters of the exigent circumstances exception as it would apply to the facts therein, noting that the crucial distinction in its case was the presence of confederates who would have had reason to search for and remove defendant’s automobile.