Court Opinion

ID: 9592859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:17:35.940416+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:15:34.668001
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. BABLITCH, J.
(dissenting). Although I join Chief Justice Heffernan’s dissent, I write to emphasize two points: first, the reach of this case goes well beyond the innocuous sounding "warrantless search of a vehicle.” This case allows a search without warrant of the entire contents of a vehicle, including trunk, suitcases, briefcases, purses and wallets, regardless of whether there is time to obtain a warrant. The only requirement is an after the fact proof that the police had probable cause to believe that the vehicle or its contents contained contraband. Second, this case does not, as argued by the concurring opinion, provide a new weapon to the police in their fight against crime. The police have always had the right, assuming there is probable cause, to search a vehicle and its contents, with or without a warrant depending on the circumstances. Instead the majority opinion provides the police with an unnecessary savings óf a few minutes time at the expense of our fundamental constitutional rights to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.
HH
The reach of the majority opinion extends far beyond the innocuous sounding "warrantless search of *155a vehicle.” It extends to a locked or unlocked trunk, suitcases, briefcase, purse or wallet contained within the vehicle.
The rule of the Fourth Amendment and Art. I, Sec. 11, has always been the warrant requirement. Its purpose was to ensure that the protections afforded by the constitution would best be guaranteed to all citizens by injecting the judgment of an objective third party, a judge, into the search decision. The exception to this warrant requirement, a warrantless search if "exigent circumstances” existed, was recognition by the courts that evidence might be lost in certain circumstances if the police were required to obtain a warrant in every case. "Exigent circumstance” is the term given to a relatively simple question: "Is there time to get a warrant?”
Today, the majority stands the warrant requirement and its exception on its head. With respect to the automobile and its contents, what was once the exception (a warrantless search) has now become the rule, and what was once the rule (the warrant requirement) has now become irrelevant.
The majority justifies its position by stating that citizens have a "diminished expectation of privacy” in their automobiles and the contents. To the contrary, at least with respect to purses, briefcases, luggage, and the like, I believe most law abiding Wisconsin citizens have a very high expectation of privacy in these items regardless of whether that purse, that briefcase, or that luggage happens to be in the home, in the office, on their person, or in their automobile. The reasoning of the majority is, at the very least, suspect.
I — I hH
It is most unfortunate that the constitutional rights guaranteed all citizens invariably get addressed *156in this court only in the context of the rights of a guilty person who, but for an alleged constitutional transgression, would stand convicted. It is easy to forget that the rights we declare have applicability far beyond the defendant who appears before us. The rights we declare afford protections to that vast number of law abiding citizens who have expectations of privacy in their purses, their wallets, their briefcases, and other similar personal possessions regardless of their location. Until today, those law abiding citizens had every right to demand that the police get a warrant to search such items if found in their vehicle in the absence of an emergency situation. No more. Why?
The concurring opinion appears to provide the motivation for the majority’s opinion. It is, the concurring opinion says, to provide a "small but hopefully significant addition to the arsenal of law enforcement in the war on drugs. ..." Concurring op. at 141. The majority’s opinion will provide no such thing. A warrantless search of a vehicle and its contents, in the absence of exigent circumstances, may save a few minutes of a police officer’s time, but it most definitely will not provide a new weapon for police in the fight against drugs. The police have long had available the "weapon” of a search of a vehicle for drugs when they have probable cause to believe the vehicle contains drugs. If an emergency existed, they could search without a warrant. If an emergency did not exist they had to first obtain a warrant. In today’s era of advanced technological communications, that is no formidable obstacle. The possible loss of a few minutes time in order to have an objective third party pass judgment on the reasonableness of the search is a small price to pay for the constitutional guarantees *157that the Fourth Amendment and Art. I, Sec. 11 provide for all citizens, not just the guilty.
The concurring opinion maintains that the emergency requirement "can result in the loss to the state of essential evidence even though probable cause existed to make such search." Concurring op. at 139. If that is the case, the facts before us do not present such circumstances. In fact, the instant case represents a perfect example of the reasonableness of the emergency requirement. The suspect was already arrested, far from his vehicle. Neither he, nor anyone else except the police, had access to it. There not only was more than adequate time to obtain a warrant, there was not a scintilla of chance that any incriminating evidence would be lost in the time necessary to obtain a warrant.
So what is this "new weapon” the majority apparently believes they have now given the police? Certainly it is not the right to search without a warrant. Police have always had that right when they had probable cause and no time to obtain a warrant. The probable cause requirement remains. Thus, the only "new weapon” is that the police need not bother to procure a warrant even when there is more than adequate time to obtain one.
The constitutional rights and freedoms we all enjoy will never be removed in a wholesale sweep. Instead, the attacks will be on the periphery, in increments so small as to be nearly indiscernible. And bit by bit these rights and freedoms can be eroded until, one day, we awake to find that what could never succeed by frontal attack has succeeded incrementally. This case presents such a gradual erosion of rights and does so unnecessarily.
*158There is much in society today that creates fierce tension in the rights and freedoms essential to democracy. We all want a drug free society. We all want crime eradicated. Few people, however, understand or even sense the pressure these laudable objectives place on equally desirable goals of privacy in our home and possessions, and freedom from arbitrary governmental action. Much is at stake as we attempt to balance these competing interests. This court has a critical role in framing and determining these issues, and we should do so not just in terms of what the people fear, but in terms of the rights and freedoms that they value.
Unfortunately, the effect of the majority’s holding on law abiding citizens who, because of police error have their most personal belongings searched without a warrant, will rarely, if ever, be seen by this court. A few minutes of police time to obtain a warrant when there is time to do so is a small price to pay for the protections that the warrant requirement gives all citizens, most particularly the law abiding.
I am authorized to state that JUSTICE SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON joins in this dissent.