Court Opinion

ID: 9795303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:25:05.784054+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:29:20.261792
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE RICE
dissenting.
¶93 I respectfully dissent.
¶94 The Court holds that police could not, incident to Hardaway’s arrest, obtain the blood on his hands without first obtaining a search warrant. The Court’s holding requires that police, following a suspect’s arrest, “bag” his bloody hands, keep him under surveillance while waiting for a warrant, and seize the blood evidence only after the warrant is issued. I believe that the Court’s holding is erroneous.
¶95 The Court’s introductory analysis is well founded. I concur with the adoption of the search analysis in Cupp v. Murphy, and the conclusion, pursuant to Cupp, that the swabbing of Hardaway’s hands constituted a warrantless search. Holzapel is thus inconsistent to the extent that it found an ultraviolet lighting of the defendant’s hands was not a search. I further concur that the Montana Constitution *168provides greater protections to our citizens than afforded under the United States Constitution on this issue, making the existence of exigent circumstances an appropriate consideration when reviewing warrantless searches, and when applying the provisions of § 46-5-102, MCA. However, I believe that Holzapel and Ulrich, though now flawed in their search analyses, reached the correct results.
¶96 It is the Court’s application of the exigent circumstances requirement in this case which is erroneous. The Court holds that “there was simply no exigent circumstances requiring a warrantless search,” finding the warrantless search was unnecessary because:
Its purpose was not to discover or seize “the fruits of the crime,” nor was it conducted to preserve evanescent evidence. From the record, it is clear the police knew that the blood they swabbed and sent in for analysis was Hardaway’s blood, and not the blood of a victim that could be washed away unless taken at once. Had the goal been simply to preserve evidence that there was blood on Hardaway’s hands, that was accomplished by the photographs taken of his hands while in custody. In the alternative, the officers could have bagged Hardaway’s hands and kept him under surveillance until obtaining a valid search warrant. [¶ 58]
¶97 The Court’s reasoning is flawed in several respects. First, the Court finds that the search was not conducted to preserve evanescent evidence. It reasons that because the police knew the substance on Hardaway’s hands was his own blood, there was not an urgency that would exist if the substance had been the victim’s blood “that could be washed away unless taken at once.”
¶98 The missed point here is that the blood on Hardaway’s hands — regardless of whose it was — was subject to loss precisely because it “could be washed away unless taken at once.” The evidence here was no less evanescent just because it may have been Hardaway’s blood, because it was, nonetheless, valuable evidence that was subject to immediate loss.1 Further, while the police may have made certain *169assumptions about the nature of the blood, there could not be certainty about those assumptions until a sample had been tested and confirmed. For that reason, it was necessary for police to prevent the “washing away” of the evidence by acting promptly to seize and preserve it.
¶99 Secondly, the Court reasons that if the police’s goal was simply to preserve evidence that there was blood on Hardaway’s hands, that goal was accomplished by the photographs taken of Hardaway’s hands. Leaving aside the point that a photograph alone may be insufficient to establish the existence of blood, the Court’s holding produces a conflicted result: that it is permissible to subject an arrested suspect to the process of photographing his hands without a warrant, but it is not permissible to conduct a simple surface swabbing of his hands without a warrant. I submit that the same exigent circumstances on which the Court permits the photographing process also exist for the swabbing process. Both are unobtrusive procedures which capture evidence from the suspect’s hands which may be lost. The Court inexplicably requires a warrant for the swabbing process only. In United States v. Bridges (7th Cir. 1974), 499 F.2d 179, cert. denied 419 U.S. 1010, 95 S.Ct. 330, 42 L.Ed.2d 284, the defendant moved to suppress, on Fourth Amendment grounds, the nonconsensual swabbing of his hands which had occurred at the station house following his arrest to confirm the suspected presence of explosives. The Seventh Circuit Court recognized the exigent circumstances inherent to preserve such evidence and upheld the warrantless search, comparing it to photographing the defendant:
It is apparent that had the agents not swabbed Bridges’ hands at the time, the opportunity may not have knocked again, especially if Bridges washed his hands. ... The swabbing was no more offensive to Bridges’ person than fingerprinting or photographing him.
Bridges, 499 F.2d at 184 (emphasis added). See also, Ray v. State (Ark. 1991), 803 S.W.2d 894, which, relying on Bridges, found exigent circumstances existed to sanction a warrantless gunpowder residue *170test conducted at the police station because “had appellant washed his hands, the chance to conduct the test would have been gone.”
¶100 I would find that exigent circumstances existed to justify the warrantless seizure of the blood on Hardaway’s hands. This Court has clearly defined exigent circumstances as follows:
[Ejxigent circumstances are those circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to believe that prompt action was necessary to prevent physical harm to police officers or other persons, [or] the destruction of relevant evidence ....
State v. Elison, 2000 MT 323, ¶ 56, 302 Mont. 228, ¶ 56, 14 P.3d 456, ¶ 56 (citing State v. Wakeford, 1998 MT 15, 287 Mont. 220, 953 P.2d 1065) (emphasis added).
¶101 I respectfully submit that a reasonable person would believe that prompt action was necessary to prevent the destruction of relevant blood evidence on Hardaway’s hands. In fact, the Court impliedly admits this necessity. If destruction of evidence was not a concern, there would be no need for the Court to suggest that the police “bag” the defendant’s hands. There would be no further need for the Court to instruct police to “keep [the defendant] under surveillance until obtaining a valid search warrant,” unless it was to prevent the defendant from destroying the evidence against him which lies in his very hands.
¶102 The Court is essentially holding that the existence of evanescent crime evidence on a suspect’s hands does not establish exigent circumstances justifying a warrantless seizure if the police conceivably had other means of securing the evidence until a warrant could be obtained. This holding inserts a speculative analytical methodology into search incident to arrest that is found nowhere in American jurisprudence. I respectfully submit that, sadly, this “bag and watch” decision comports neither with any legal precedent nor with the realities of law enforcement. I strongly dissent.
¶103 I further dissent from the Court’s holding on Issue 2, although the Court’s reversal of the conviction on the suppression issue negates need for a lengthy discussion. First, the Amended Information charged Hardaway with the offense of burglary in the precise language of the statute, properly apprising him of the charge, and notifying him of the prosecution’s theft or sexual crime theory. State v. Steffes (1994), 269 Mont. 214, 887 P.2d 1196.
¶104 However, the Court faults the Information because it “would allow some members of the jury to convict him of attempting a theft, while others might convict him of attempting a sexual crime.” Hardaway was charged neither with attempted theft nor attempt of a *171sexual crime, and further, the State was not required to prove these offenses. The State was required to prove only that Hardaway unlawfully entered Ms. Dobitz’ home “with the purpose to commit an offense therein.” Section 45-6-204(1), MCA (1997). The State is not burdened with also establishing the elements of an underlying or attempted offense that the charged burglar intended to commit. Here, the State offered evidence from which the jury could infer that Hardaway’s purpose was to commit either theft or a sexual crime, which the District Court instructed was the crime of sexual assault, and of which the Amended Information gave sufficient notice.
¶105 The District Court then properly instructed the jury that, after consideration, it must return a unanimous verdict. After consideration, it did so. I would affirm.

The Court has understated the significance and value of the blood evidence on Hardaway’s hands.
Justice Trieweiler’s concurrence states that Hardaway’s blood was not capable of destruction “other than that which was found on his hands.’’ He later reasons that this risk of destruction did not establish grounds for a warrantless search because “evidence of Hardaway’s blood type could not be destroyed.” While it is true that Hardaway’s blood type could be confirmed by later testing, both the concurrence and the majority opinion overlook the larger value of the evidence. The issue here is larger than identification of blood type.
Blood on Hardaway’s hands at the time of his arrest is an evidentiary link between him and the time and place of the crime, since he was arrested within a few blocks and within a few minutes of the crime. A later blood test provides no such time *169and place nexus. The hand blood is also an evidentiary link between Hardaway’s hands and everything he had touched that night, particularly the broken glass which produced the blood and which was Hardaway’s means of entry. Lastly, and most importantly, evidence that the blood found at the scene matched the blood on Hardaway’s hands allows proof of the facts of the crime to be made by direct evidence: that Hardaway had cut his hands on entry, became bloodied, touched items in the premises with his bloody hands, and that the cuts he sustained produced a sufficient amount of blood to leave it around the property and on himself. Without the blood from Hardaway’s hands, the prosecution would he required to establish some of these facts circumstantially.