Court Opinion

ID: 9710438
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:10:02.58258+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:56.866954
License: Public Domain

ZAPPALA, Justice,
dissenting.
The Court today holds that Pennsylvania law enforcement officials may utilize a drug detection dog to conduct a general sweep of students’ school lockers and thereafter search particular lockers to investigate criminal wrongdoing without proba*58ble cause to believe that any individual student is in possession of illegal narcotics. The Court reaches this result through an erroneous analysis of governing constitutional law. I must therefore dissent.
According to the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court, “[t]he instant case requires this court to decide what degree of scrutiny is appropriate when reviewing a constitutional challenge to a search conducted by public school officials on school property” (Op. at 353), adding in a footnote, “we agree with the factual finding of the trial court that this search was undertaken by the school officials” (Op. at 353, n. 5). This so-called “factual finding” is refuted by the record.
The record reveals that on April 12, 1994, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper J. Donald Normandy, with the assistance of an Erie County Drug Task Force detection dog and its handler, Officer Peter Dragella of the City of Erie Police Department, conducted a general sweep of the 2,000 student lockers at Harborcreek High School in Erie County, Pennsylvania. The sweep was conducted at the request of school officials. During the sweep, any locker which the drug detection dog “alerted” on and any adjacent lockers were opened and searched by Trooper Normandy. Although eighteen lockers were ultimately opened and searched, the only locker found to contain contraband was that of Appellee, eighteen year old Vincent Francis Cass. Therein, Trooper Normandy discovered drug paraphernalia and a small amount of marijuana in the pockets of a jacket.
Appellee was thereafter summoned to the principal’s office, where Trooper Normandy read Appellee his Miranda1 rights, requested that Appellee sign a waiver form and questioned Appellee in the presence of the principal, the assistant principal and Officer Dragella. After indicating that he understood his rights, Appellee made an oral statement admitting that the items of contraband were his. Appellee was subsequently charged with one count each of possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.
*59To characterize the locker search in this case as a search by school officials is to engage in subterfuge. Appellee’s school locker was searched by police officers and the contraband seized as a result thereof formed the basis of a criminal prosecution.2 This case does not present the question of what degree of scrutiny is appropriate when reviewing a constitutional challenge to a search conducted by school officials on school property; rather, it presents the question of what degree of scrutiny is appropriate when reviewing a constitutional challenge to an evidentiary search conducted by police officers on school property.
I
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:
*60The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The Fourth Amendment sets the minimum level of protection from unreasonable searches and seizures below which the states may not fall. Commonwealth v. Sell, 504 Pa. 46, 470 A.2d 457 (1988). In determining whether a search violates the Fourth Amendment, the initial question is whether the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to the search at issue.
The application of the Fourth Amendment to searches in public schools has been addressed by the United States Supreme Court in two different settings. See New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985); Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995). While the decisions in T.L.O. and Vernonia are instructive generally, the critical distinction between those cases and the instant case is that the searches in T.L.O. and Vernonia were conducted by school officials, whereas the search conducted in the instant case was conducted by police officers.
In T.L.O., the Court concluded that a search of a student’s purse by school officials based upon reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing did not constitute an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment. In reaching its decision, the Court first held that the fourth amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches conducted by public school officials. Ten years later in Vernonia, the Court addressed the issue of school searches in the context of a school district’s policy of mandatory urinalysis testing of student athletes for illegal drugs. The Court began its analysis by noting that under Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn., 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989), and National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989), *61state-compelled testing of urine constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
In the instant case, before actually opening and searching Appellee’s locker, the police conducted a canine sniff of all the lockers at Harborcreek High School. In Commonwealth v. Johnston, 515 Pa. 454, 530 A.2d 74 (1987), this Court stated, “we believe that the majority view of the United States Supreme Court would be that [a] canine sniff [carried out on private property and directed at the closed door of a private area] would not constitute a search.” 530 A.2d at 78; see United States v. Place, 462 U.S. 696, 103 S.Ct. 2637, 77 L.Ed.2d 110 (1983). Thus, a canine sniff of lockers at a public school does not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment.
The inquiry then becomes whether the subsequent search of Appellee’s locker constitutes a search subject to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment. In T.L.O., the Court observed:
We do not address the question, not presented by this case, whether a schoolchild has a legitimate expectation of privacy in lockers, desks, or other school property provided for the storage of school supplies.
469 U.S. at 337 n. 5, 105 S.Ct. at 741 n. 5. However, with regard to the issue before it, the Court reasoned:
Although this Court may take notice of the difficulty of maintaining discipline in the public schools today, the situation is not so dire that students in the schools may claim no legitimate expectations of privacy. We have recently recognized that the need to maintain order in a prison is such that prisoners retain no legitimate expectations of privacy in their cells, but it goes almost without saying that “[t]he prisoner and the schoolchild stand in wholly different circumstances, separated by the harsh facts of criminal conviction and incarceration.” Ingraham v. Wright, supra, 430 U.S. [651], at 669, 97 S.Ct. [1401], at 1411, [51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977)]. We are not yet ready to hold that the schools and *62the prisons need be equated for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.
Students at a minimum must bring to school not only the supplies needed for their studies, but also keys, money, and the necessaries of personal hygiene and grooming. In addition, students may carry on their persons or in purses or wallets such nondisruptive yet highly personal items as photographs, letters, and diaries. Finally, students may have perfectly legitimate reasons to carry with them articles of property needed in connection with extracurricular or recreational activities. In short, schoolchildren may find it necessary to carry with them a variety of legitimate, non-contraband items, and there is no reason to conclude that they have necessarily waived all rights to privacy in such items merely by bringing them onto school grounds.
Id. at 338-339,105 S.Ct. at 741.
Similarly, there is no reason to conclude that students have necessarily waived all rights to privacy in items they find necessary to bring onto school grounds merely by placing such items in a school locker. A student does retain a legitimate expectation of privacy in a school locker under the Fourth Amendment. To hold otherwise would equate school lockers and prison cells for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.3
*63Having concluded that the Fourth Amendment applies to school lockers, it must then be determined whether the subsequent search of Appellee’s locker comports with the Fourth Amendment. In T.L.O., the Court reasoned:
It is evident that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject. The warrant requirement, in particular, is unsuited to the school environment: requiring a school teacher to obtain a warrant before searching a child suspected of an infraction of school rules (or of the criminal law) would unduly interfere with the maintenance of the swift and informal disciplinary procedures needed in the schools. Just as we have dispensed with the warrant requirement when “the burden of obtaining a warrant is likely to frustrate the government purpose behind the search,” Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. [523], at 532-533, 87 S.Ct. [1727], at 1733 [18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967)], we hold today that school officials need not obtain a warrant before searching a student who is under their authority.
469 U.S. at 340, 105 S.Ct. at 742. Instead of applying the traditional fourth amendment standard of probable cause to assess the validity of a search, the Court held that a search of a student by a school official is constitutional upon a showing of “reasonableness.” In Vernonia, the Court stated:
A search unsupported by probable cause can be constitutional, we have said, “when special needs, beyond the normal need for law-enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable.” Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 874, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 3168, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987) (internal quotation marks omitted).
We have found.such “special needs” to exist in the public-school context. There, the warrant requirement “would unduly interfere with the maintenance of swift and informal disciplinary procedures [that are] needed,” and “strict *64adherence to the requirement that searches be based upon probable cause” would undercut “the substantial need of teachers and administrators for freedom to maintain order in the schools.” T.L.O., supra, 469 U.S. [325], at 340, 341, 105 S.Ct. [733], at 742, [83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985)].
515 U.S. at 653,115 S.Ct. at 2391.
Thus, T.L.O. and Vernonia stand for the proposition, as stated in T.L.O., “that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject.” 469 U.S. at 340, 105 S.Ct. at 742. However, the Court in T.L.O. explicitly limited its holding by stating:
[We do not] express any opinion on the standards (if any) governing searches of such areas by school officials or by other public authorities acting at the request of school officials.
Id. at 338 n. 5, 105 S.Ct. at 741 n. 5. The Court re-emphasized this limitation by further stating:
We here consider only searches carried out by school authorities acting alone and on their own authority. This case does not present the question of the appropriate standard for assessing the legality of searches conducted by school officials in conjunction with or at the behest of law enforcement agencies, and we express no opinion on that question.
Id. at 342 n. 7, 105 S.Ct. at 743 n. 7. The Court in Vernonia also implicitly acknowledged this distinction:
Despite the fact that, like routine school physicals and vaccinations ... the search here is undertaken for prophylactic and distinctly non punitive purposes (protecting student athletes from injury, and deterring drug use in the student population) ... the dissent would nonetheless lump this search together with “evidentiary” searches, which generally require probable cause....
515 U.S. at 658 n. 2, 115 S.Ct. at 2393 n. 2 (citations omitted).
Thus, the United States Supreme Court has not spoken on the appropriate standard in a public school setting for assessing the legality of an evidentiary search conducted by police *65officers and forming the basis of a criminal prosecution, as in the instant case. However, the preceding quotation seems to suggest that “evidentiary” searches conducted by law enforcement officials for the purposes of investigating criminal conduct require probable cause.
In Picha v. Wielgos, 410 F.Supp. 1214 (N.D.Ill.1976), the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois came to that very conclusion. In Picha, a public school principal received a telephone call leading him to suspect several students of possession of illegal drugs. The principal summoned the police at the direction of the school superintendent. After the police arrived, each student was separately searched by the school nurse and school psychologist. The court ruled that the police could not constitutionally “cause a search in the absence of probable cause [to believe that the students] possessed an illegal material at the time of the search.” 410 F.Supp. at 1221. The court noted:
Although the school may have an interest in the safety of its charges, either with regard to one student possessing drugs, or with regard to the possibility that that student would transfer possession of drugs to another student, all it can do in furtherance of that interest is to locate and perhaps confiscate the drugs.
[T]he substantial state interest in the provision of education and the maintenance of school discipline cannot be here said to temper the application of the Constitution to a search caused by police for evidence of crime.
Id. at 1220-1221. I find this reasoning persuasive.
The “special needs” that prompted the United States Supreme Court in T.L.O. and Vernonia to “ease the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject” and to adopt a reasonableness standard — “the preservation of swift and informal disciplinary procedures needed in the schools” and “the substantial need of teachers and administrators for freedom to maintain order in the schools”—cannot be construed or applied so as to legitimize an investigation by *66police officers aimed at obtaining evidence to be used in a criminal prosecution. By applying the “reasonableness” standard to the search here at issue, the majority errs in transferring an evaluation of the special needs of public school officials from the context in which the United States Supreme Court developed it to the different and more expansive context of seizures directed at the discovery and punishment of criminal activity.
Furthermore, to fail to apply the probable cause standard to the criminal investigation in this case solely on the basis that the subjects of that investigation are schoolchildren is to equate schoolchildren with probationers and parolees for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.4 This error is all the more egregious when the schoolchild in the instant case is in actuality an eighteen year old who has ascended from the age of minority.
A search conducted by police officers in a public school setting for the purposes of penal law enforcement, even when conducted at the request of school officials, must be supported by probable cause in order to comport with the Fourth Amendment.
The United States Supreme Court has stated:
In enforcing the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Court has insisted upon probable cause as the minimum requirement for a reasonable search permitted by the Constitution. As a general rule, it has also required the judgment of a magistrate on the probable-cause issue and issuance of a warrant before a search is made. Only in exigent circumstances will the judgment of the police as to probable cause serve as a sufficient authorization for a search.
Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 51, 90 S.Ct. 1975, 1981, 26 L.Ed.2d 419 (1970).
*67Turning to the instant case, it is undisputed that after the drug detection dog “alerted” on Appellee’s locker, the locker was immediately opened and searched by Trooper Normandy without a search warrant. That search was unsupported by either probable cause or exigent circumstances.
The mere fact that the drug detection dog alerted on Appellee’s locker falls short of establishing the requisite probable cause for a search. Implicit in the fact that it was necessary to search any lockers adjacent to those alerted on by the drug detection dog is the conclusion that the police officers could not reasonably rely upon the dog’s particularized detection. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for the officers to search the adjacent lockers. At the suppression hearing, Officer Dragella was questioned as to whether the fact that in seventeen of the eighteen “hits” made by the drug detection dog, no contraband was found meant that the drug detection dog was unreliable. Officer Dragella explained, “[w]ell, we can’t say that those are non finds because if he’s smelling odor, there still could be hits even though we don’t find anything. He’s working on the odor, not the actual substance” (N.T. 10/4/94 at 84). Thus, the fact that the drug detection dog alerted on Appellee’s locker, at its best, could only have provided the police officers with the knowledge that the odor of contraband was present in either Appellee’s locker or those adjacent thereto. Coupled with the fact that the police officers had no other information that Appellee’s locker might contain contraband,5 probable cause was clearly lacking.6
*68Accordingly, I must conclude that the search of Appellee’s locker and the seizure of the contraband found therein constituted a violation of Appellee’s rights under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
II
Article 1, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides:
The people shall be secure in their persons, houses, papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation subscribed to by the affiant.
“Article 1, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, as consistently interpreted by this Court, mandates greater recognition [than the Fourth Amendment] of the need for protection from illegal government conduct offensive to the right of privacy.” Commonwealth v. Sell, 504 Pa. 46, 67, 470 A.2d 457, 468 (1983).
In Commonwealth v. Johnston, this Court held that under Article 1, Section 8, a balancing approach weighing the privacy expectations of the individual against the interests of law enforcement in order to determine whether an unreasonable search or seizure had occurred, is only appropriate in the Terry7 context of exigent circumstances where a police officer’s trained on-the-spot observations call for necessarily swift action which as a practical matter cannot be subject to the warrant requirement. In so doing, this Court specifically *69rejected the balancing analysis utilized by the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Place8
While the analysis under Article 1, Section 8 does not require a balancing to determine whether a search took place, a balancing analysis is appropriate in determining whether a search implicates the warrant requirement. In Johnston, this Court performed that balancing inquiry with regard to canine sniff-searches. There, we held that under Article 1, Section 8, a narcotics detection dog may be deployed to test for the presence of narcotics where: (1) the police are able to articulate reasonable grounds for believing that drugs may be present in the place they seek to test; and (2) the police are lawfully present in the place where the canine sniff is conducted. 515 Pa. at 465-466, 530 A.2d at 79. However, absent from the Johnston test is a requirement of probable cause, supplanted instead by articulable reasonable grounds for suspicion.9
Turning to the search in the instant case, while the police officers were lawfully present at Harborcreek High School, satisfying the second prong of the Johnston test, the facts surrounding the search fail to establish the articulable reasonable grounds for suspicion necessary to satisfy the first prong. The search here at issue was a general sweep of the 2,000 student lockers at Harborcreek High School. Articulable reasonable grounds for suspicion were plainly absent.
Nevertheless, the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court justifies this general search by relying on this Court’s *70decisions in Commonwealth v. Tarbert, 517 Pa. 277, 535 A.2d 1035 (1987), and Commonwealth v. Blouse, 531 Pa. 167, 611 A.2d 1177 (1992). Mr. Chief Justice Flaherty, in his Concurring Opinion, precisely expresses why reliance on Tarbert and Blouse is misplaced, stating,
I cannot agree that the random stops conducted by police in those cases have any legitimacy under Article 1, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution or that the circumstances of those cases are similar to the case at bar. Under the patently anomalous decisions in Tarbert and Blouse—wrongly decided in my view—fundamental constitutional protections against government intrusion vanish when the government claims that a particular problem requires random police searches. This exception to the general requirement of probable cause or reasonable suspicion swallows the entire prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is, therefore, unconstitutional.
Concurring Op. at 366.10
Notwithstanding the misplaced reliance on Tarbert and Blouse, the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court further errs by finding that the requirements of Johnston were satisfied in the instant case. What the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court ignores is the fact that in Johnston, after conducting the canine-sniff of the storage locker which the police suspected of containing contraband, the police sought and obtained a search warrant. As no such warrant was sought in the instant case and there were no exigent circumstances (see text accompanying note 6), regardless of the legality of the canine-sniff, when the police officers *71subsequently opened and searched Appellee’s locker, they violated Appellee’s right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Accordingly, I must conclude that the search of Appellee’s locker and the seizure of the contraband found therein constituted a violation of Appellee’s rights under Article 1, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the Order of the Superior Court. I therefore respectfully dissent.

. Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

. At the suppression hearing, the principal of Harborcreek High School, Donald Papesch, was questioned on cross-examination as follows:
Q: Now when [the police] brought the dog to the school, did the school officials do the search with the dog?
A: No.
Q: Did the police do the search with the dog?
A: We were with the dog.
Q: I understand. But did the police do the actual search with the dog?
A: Yes.
Q: Are the police officers employees of the school district?
A: No.
Q: They were acting in their capacity as police officers, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: With respect to when the locker was searched, is it true that the only involvement of the school officials at that point was to identify whose locker it was and to open the locker for the police?
A: And look at the material.
Q: And look at the material in conjunction with the police?
A: The police kept on going, they weren’t there, they would be down the hall several feet.
Q: Now, were those items turned over to the police?
A: Yes.
Q: And did the police take those into evidence for this criminal prosecution?
A: Yes.
N.T. 10/4/94 at 55-56.

. The majority’s analysis of this question places unwarranted significance on the Harborcreek High School Code of Student Conduct (Code). If this case merely involved a search of school lockers by school officials, discussion of the Code in relation to the students’ expectation of privacy would be entirely appropriate. However, when it is police officers who conduct a search of the school lockers, the Code is of no moment. The Code provides:
School authorities may search a student’s locker and seize any illegal materials. Such materials may be used as evidence against the student in disciplinary proceedings. Prior to a locker search a student shall be notified and given an opportunity to be present. However, where school authorities have a reasonable suspicion that the locker contains materials which pose a threat to the health, welfare and safety of the students in the school, students’ lockers may be searched without prior warning.
(Code, R.R. at 142a) (emphasis added). Police officers are neither school officials nor "school authorities,” and "disciplinary proceedings” are entirely different from criminal proceedings. "[Wjhatever may be the consent to the discretion of the school officials deemed *63constructively made by parent or student, it cannot vitiate the constitutional expectation of privacy which creates the need for levels of suspicion and/or exigency in the conduct of a criminal investigation.” Picha v. Wielgos, 410 F.Supp. 1214, 1221 (N.D.Ill.1976).

. See Scott v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole, 548 Pa. 418, 698 A.2d 32 (1997) (holding that although probationers and parolees have a privacy interest protected by the Fourth Amendment, it is a more narrowly protected privacy interest than that afforded a free individual).

. At the suppression hearing, Trooper Normandy answered the following question on cross-examination:
Q: And what was your reasonable suspicion that Mr. Cass was involved with drugs or had drugs in his locker?
A: I had no knowledge of Mr. Cass prior to the search, it was based on the findings of the dog.
N.T. 10/4/94 at 71.

. Even assuming arguendo that probable cause existed to believe that Appellee’s locker contained contraband, there were no exigent circumstances excusing the warrant requirement. As stated in the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court: "The school principal announced to the students that morning that a safety inspection would be *68conducted. The students were to remain in class until the inspection was completed” (Op. at 352). With all of the students of Harborcreek High School, including Appellee, confined to their classrooms, there was no exigency that could excuse a failure by police officers to procure a warrant.

. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968). This Court adopted the rationale of Terry in Commonwealth v. Hicks, 434 Pa. 153, 253 A.2d 276 (1969).

. Thus, while the canine sniff of the 2,000 lockers at Harborcreek High School is not considered a search under the Fourth Amendment, it is considered a search under Article 1, Section 8.

. That holding was based on the following factors:
[A] canine sniff-search is inherently less intrusive upon an individual’s privacy than other searches such as wiretapping or rummaging through one’s luggage; it is unlikely to intrude except marginally upon innocent persons; and an individual’s interest in being free from police harassment, annoyance, inconvenience and humiliation is reasonably certain of protection if the police must have a reason before they may, in the circumstances of this case, utilize a narcotics detection dog.
515 Pa. at 466, 530 A.2d at 79-80.

. However, the rationale expressed by Mr. Chief Justice Flaherty for concurring in the result reached in the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court suffers from the same infirmity the rationale of the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court suffers from — the foundation upon which both are built is the characterization of the search here at issue as one by school officials. The Concurring Opinion’s sui generis analysis is inappropriate when considering a search conducted by police officers in a public school setting for the purposes of penal law enforcement. By inaccurately characterizing the search here at issue as one made by school officials, the Concurring Opinion erroneously sanctions the exact type of random police search it simultaneously condemns in Tarbert and Blouse.