Court Opinion

ID: 9750230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:38:28.844576+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:04.814270
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Pomeroy:
I respectfully dissent from. that portion of the Court’s opinion which holds that a five to fifteen second delay after announcement by the police of their presence and purpose is not a sufficient lapse of time before forcible entry of a dwelling may be resorted to.
In the case before us there was a valid warrant for the search of a small, two-story family residence. The search warrant authorized seizure of quickly destructible lottery paraphernalia. The officers seeking to execute the warrant believed the records would be on rice paper, which dissolves on contact with water. They announced themselves as police officers who had a search warrant. They heard voices inside the house. Just after their announcement they saw a window blind on a window next to the front door of the house raised and someone within look out the window. The blind was then lowered. The two officers who testified both at the suppression hearing and at trial were uncertain how much time elapsed thereafter before they broke open the door. They estimated it variously as between five and twenty seconds.1
Defendant’s wife testified that she went to the kitchen to get a robe before opening the door. She *565said her husband was asleep on the couch at the time, and that she was the one who always opened the door when there was a knock. Asked where her husband was when the officers came in, she answered that when he heard “the crash” (i.e., the door being broken) he jumped up, and went to the kitchen. (One of the officers had previously testified that when they entered the defendant was in the kitchen holding white paper under the tap water.)
1 do not consider that Commonwealth v. Newman, 429 Pa. 441, 240 A. 2d 795 (1968) dictates the result now reached by the Court. The question there was whether there were any “exigent circumstances” that would justify dispensing with the announcement of purpose. It was held that the lapse of twenty seconds after an inadequate announcement (“the police”) was not such an exigent circumstance because it was not long enough “to constitute support for a belief that evidence was being destroyed.”2 In the present case dual warning of authority and purpose was given. The police could therefore properly conclude that the failure promptly to open the door was not because the occupants did not know by what authority and for what purpose the police claimed the right to enter, but because. evidence was being destroyed.
Once the officers have announced their identity and purpose, they should have to wait only the time necessary for someone to come to the door to admit them. Here the premises to be searched was a small residence; voices were heard inside the house after the police announcement ; and someone raised and lowered a window blind a few feet from the door. I must agree with the suppression hearing judge, the trial judge and the Superior Court that under all the circumstances of this *566ease the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure was not violated. Cf. Commonwealth v. Murray, 441 Pa. 22, 25, 271 A. 2d 500 (1970) (dissenting opinion).
Mr. Justice Jones joins in this dissenting opinion.

 The actual testimony in this respect was as follows: “approximately ten or fifteen seconds”; “ten, five, I don’t know how many seconds”; “I couldn’t possibly say it was ten seconds or twenty seconds or five seconds”; “I couldn’t tell exactly how long it was, but it was very shortly after that [the announcement and the raising and lowering of the blind]”.

 As the majority opinion points out, in Newman the occupants were known to the police officers to be on the second floor.