Court Opinion

ID: 9854506
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:08:27.504053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:07.572563
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring').
I concur for the reason that the heart of the ordinance required the operators of a corporation to furnish keys to police officers to enter the corporation’s premises at any time, — which in my opinion is unconstitutional. This sort of sanction simply substitutes a metal key for the traditional and historical requirement that a magistrate shall issue a search and seizure warrant only upon probable cause, describing the place to be searched and the reason therefor, — with a statement under oath by him who seeks its issuance, subject to the penalties of perjury. The key to a Yale lock is no evidence of perjury and cannot satisfy the safeguards built into the Fourth Amendment to prevent unreasonable searches and seizures. To give a policeman a key to enter any nonprofit club that may possess or have liquor on the premises would open the doors perhaps to many ladies’ or gentlemen’s social clubs, probably the Chamber of Commerce, or any number of other clubs, including ladies’ bridge clubs.
It must be remembered that the possession and consumption of liquor in Utah are perfectly legal although there is some doubt as to who gets drunk and where. Demon Rum has no such conscience. It is true and wholesome that laws give peace officers the authority to control its traffic and its imbibation, but somewhat risible to picture a man on the beat having a key ring on his belt alongside a pair of handcuffs and a six-shooter, which ring is designed only to enter private property, at will, and in accordance with his feelings or suspicions, to take a look-see around. Such a liberty guaranteed to a police officer, destroys another guaranteed liberty, — that of occupying and using one’s property without the suspicion cast upon him as being a lawbreaker by being forced to surrender a key to the premises to the Chief of Police or the Chief of Anything else.
I am quite unimpressed with the language of the dissent to the effect that the police officers use the key simply to browse, not to search, — only to see what anyone else might see. Practically every search that ever is made is by someone with a 20-20 vision or some other eye-rated, normal-visioned human, — not by a blind person. A search pretty much has affinity with eyeballs. If this ordinance is any good, the next step could be to pass one requiring a key from the owner of every home where such owner allows his guests to consume liquor.
The presumption is that “social clubs, recreational associations, athletic and kindred associations” operate within the law. Giving a key to the premises to policemen *327not only destroys that presumption, but immediately raises a presumption that such associations may be operating unlawfully.
For the reasons above I think the ordinance should be held unconstitutional, the key to which conclusion being the key hanging on the belt of a policeman.
In answer to Mr. Chief Justice Crockett’s four points in his dissent, the following observations may be made:
As to 1) : That the State has not preempted the field in this case: There is nothing in the main opinion suggesting that the State has pre-empted the field. The two dissents, in substance and effect, seem to say that the city has pre-empted the field. The main opinion says only that where the State has exclusive power to determine the basic requirements for incorporation, the city, by ordinance, cannot muscle inte that area by determining such requisites in defiant contravention thereto. The Chief Justice implied that the State, issuing the franchise, is helpless thereafter to control or supervise it and its officers, if a city, by ordinance, deigns otherwise. This appears to me to lack something with respect to the question of where the fountain of legislative authority has its situs.
As to 2) : That the ordinance is not unreasonable: Is simply an opinion and an ipse dixit, for which the Chief Justice cites no authority, except himself.
As to 3) : That the main opinion saying the ordinance is unconstitutional is an unwarranted intrusion into the legislative branch: This is another gratuity, since the very function of the judiciary is to interpret the laws enacted by the legislature and thus intrude into that area, — a principle that in other cases the Chief Justice many times has espoused.
As to 4) : That so far as we know, says the Chief Justice, there has been no unreasonable search and no reason to fear there will be: If this means that the police have not used the keys to date, that is understandable, since this case to date has not been decided. If it means that to date there has been no case going beyond the browsing or look-see stage, that also is understandable, but the impact of the Chief Justice’s predilection overlooks the fact that if the officer legally is on the premises by virtue of the key (assuming that the ordinance is valid, — which of course the Chief Justice not only assumes, but says is the fact), his statement ignores the authorities holding that if an officer is on the premises lawfully for one purpose, he not only can, but has a duty to make an arrest, if in his browsing around, he sees an offense presently being, or having been committed.