Court Opinion

ID: 9478750
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:57:22.207015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:36.332336
License: Public Domain

BEEZER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
After arresting Hoyos police officers broke the lock on his front door and entered his house to perform a protective sweep. Breaking in to search a house after a lawful arrest outside is qualitatively different from searching a house after a lawful arrest inside. Case law regarding protective sweeps does not justify the officers’ decision to enter and conduct a war-rantless search of Hoyos’s house.
A
Whether there is a distinction between protective sweeps after arrest inside and outside a house has been an open question.1 The sound logic of the Fourth Amendment compels a distinction. As the Supreme Court repeatedly has recognized, “ ‘physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.’ ” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 1379, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1979) (quoting United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313, 92 S.Ct. 2125, 2134, 32 L.Ed.2d 752 (1972)). Or, as we said recently in United States v. Winsor, 846 F.2d 1569, 1574 n. 5 (9th Cir.1988) (en banc), “The sanctity of the home enjoys special solicitude in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. That solicitude springs from the language of the Amendment itself, which specifically guards the ‘right of the people to be secure in their ... houses.’ ”
When a lawful arrest occurs inside a house, the arrest itself reduces the owner’s expectation of privacy: further exploration of the house under exigent circumstances affects privacy as a matter of degree. By *1143contrast, when an arrest occurs outside a house, the owner maintains his original high expectation of privacy. Entry into the house affects privacy as a matter of magnitude: the state’s enforcement officers breach the threshold drawn by the Court so clearly in Payton.
A court may establish the “reasonableness” of an officer’s conduct only by balancing the exigent circumstances supporting a protective sweep against the privacy interests opposing a sweep. By implication from Payton, privacy interests opposing a sweep are greater insofar as the sweep involves entering a house. Whether the arrest occurs inside (so entry is not an issue) or outside (so it is) does affect the reasonableness of the officer’s conduct. On occasion, exigent circumstances may justify a protective sweep inside after police make an arrest outside, but not as often as when police already have entered the house to make a lawful arrest.
A distinction between arrest inside and arrest outside also has a logical basis in the exigent circumstances side of the reasonableness balance. A prominent factor in exigent circumstances is safety. Police making an arrest inside a house are likely to face grave, immediate danger from others within. Police making an arrest outside ordinarily do not face the same kind of danger. Hence exigent circumstances are less compelling insofar as a protective sweep involves entering a house. Again, whether the arrest occurs inside or outside does affect the reasonableness of an officer’s conduct.
A rule giving police the same scope to search a house after an arrest outside might have the aggregate effect of making police less safe, not more safe. If police readily may enter a house after an arrest outside, occupants may become more likely to use force to ward off the intrusion. The occupants’ added incentive to use force increases the possibility that they will endanger police or others. This possibility in turn increases the exigency of the circumstances, giving police more reason to enter the house, giving occupants more incentive to use force, and so on. The result is that any arrest within gunshot range of a house may itself generate exigent circumstances justifying entry — a result probably not contemplated by Fourth Amendment law today.
In keeping with the logic of the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court originally limited protective sweeps quite narrowly. As the Court said in Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 33-34, 90 S.Ct. 1969, 1971-72, 26 L.Ed.2d 409 (1970), “If a search of a house is to be upheld as incident to an arrest, that arrest must take place inside the house, not somewhere outside — whether two blocks away, twenty feet away, or on the sidewalk near the front steps.” 399 U.S. at 33-34, 90 S.Ct. at 1971 (emphasis in original, citations omitted). Entry would be proper only if the prosecution met its burden “to show the existence of ... an exceptional situation.” Id. at 34, 90 S.Ct. at 1972. The Court listed the exceptional situations:
There is no suggestion that anyone consented to the search. The officers were not responding to an emergency. They were not in hot pursuit of a fleeing felon. The goods ultimately seized were not in the process of destruction. Nor were they about to be removed from the jurisdiction.
Id. at 35, 90 S.Ct. at 1972 (citations omitted). The facts of this case do not fit any of these situations.
B
In accordance with the Court’s analysis in Vale, the Ninth Circuit has created a hybrid out of the doctrines of exigent circumstances and search incident to arrest. The majority states our standard, “Officers who have effected an arrest at a residence may conduct a limited search for persons who may destroy evidence or pose a threat to the officers’ safety, if the officers can point to articulable facts that support their belief that others may be on the premises.” Maj.Op. at 1138. The people that officers believe to be on the premises, of course, must be the same ones who might destroy evidence or pose a threat. See United *1144States v. Whitten, 706 F.2d 1000, 1014 (9th Cir.1983).
The officers in this case cannot point to articulable facts supporting a belief that anyone else might have been in the house. The facts the officers recount are that Ho-yos tried to get back inside, that a large amount of cocaine had been seized, and that four people were seen outside the residence. The first fact is irrelevant. The inference from Hoyos’s run for the door is that he was trying to escape, not that others were in the house.2 The second fact is irrelevant as well. A cocaine seizure far away does not suggest the presence of persons in Hoyos’s house, regardless of whether co-conspirators might still be at large.
The third fact is relevant but insufficient. We have never found the mere presence of persons outside a residence to support a belief that others might be inside. In United States v. Wiga, 662 F.2d 1325 (9th Cir.1981), the agents knew at least one other person was in the motor home, even though Wiga had lied to the contrary. After the other person emerged the agents had reason to believe still more people might be inside the vehicle. 662 F.2d at 1331. Our case would be equivalent only if the officers knew at least one other person was in the house, they asked Hoyos if anyone was there, he lied to the contrary, then someone emerged.3 Lacking any such basis, the officers’ belief that other people might be inside was patently unreasonable.
Other testimony indicates that the officers did not even rely on articulable facts. At trial the following exchange occurred between counsel and Deputy Rodella: “Q. Did you have any indication that there were other people inside? A. No, sir.” In light of this statement, facts the officers purported to rely on could not sustain a reasonable belief that others might be in the house — much less with a mind to destroy evidence or jeopardize the officers’ safety.
Only destruction of evidence or danger to the officers can create exigent circumstances justifying entry. Here destruction of evidence does not suffice. In United States v. Whitten we held that circumstances similar to those in this case did not amount to exigent circumstances. 706 F.2d at 1016. Most important, we stated that destruction of evidence must appear imminent or in the process to qualify as exigent circumstances justifying entry:
The court below found exigent circumstances based upon danger of destruction of evidence, flight, and danger to the arresting officers. There was no evidence of imminent danger of destruction of evidence in the room; one of the officers testified that he had no information that Gaiefsky was in the process of destroying evidence and did not know whether anyone else was in the room.
706 F.2d at 1016. Similarly, in Vale v. Louisiana the Supreme Court required destruction “in the process.” 399 U.S. at 35, 90 S.Ct. at 1972. See also Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291, 93 S.Ct. 2000, 36 L.Ed.2d 900 (1973) (exigent circumstances where no arrest, evidence on person in process of being destroyed).
In this case the facts do not suggest destruction of evidence was in the process or was imminent. As noted above, the officers had no indication anyone was inside, much less anyone who would destroy evidence. By way of contrast, in United States v. Alfonso, 759 F.2d 728, 741 (9th Cir.1985), police saw suspects through an open door into the hotel room. In addition, police heard a “hurried scuffling noise” coming from the bathroom. 759 F.2d at 743. Circumstances like these, indicating destruction of evidence, do not occur in our case.
*1145The facts do not even suggest evidence was likely to be present. Hoyos’s house was the Starbuck residence. The officers had no reason to believe any evidence was in the Starbuck residence; the only place where they had seen drugs loaded and unloaded was the Eagle’s Nest residence, which had a reputation as a safe house for storing drugs.
In this connection, United States v. Impink, 728 F.2d 1228, 1231 (9th Cir.1984) is controlling. We have described Impink’s rule as follows: “to establish exigent circumstances due to possible destruction of evidence there must be probable cause to suspect that evidence is present on the premises; mere suspicion that evidence may be present cannot justify warrantless entry.” Alfonso, 759 F.2d at 743. Nobody has argued the police had probable cause to suspect evidence was present in the Star-buck residence at the time of Hoyos’s arrest; the search warrant issued later was based on information obtained during the protective sweep. Compare Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 814, 104 S.Ct. 3380, 3390, 82 L.Ed.2d 599 (1984) (independent source of information for affidavit). Without this information probable cause would have been lacking. See United States v. Alexander, 761 F.2d 1294, 1299-1300 (9th Cir.1985) (test for warrant obtained by tainted affidavit). As the district court found, “If the entry to the house is no good, the warrant is no good.” The officers might have had a suspicion that evidence was present, but mere suspicion “cannot justify warrantless entry.” Alfonso, 759 F.2d at 743.
Precedent indicates not only that destruction of evidence was insufficient to create exigent circumstances, but also that danger to the officers was insufficient. In United States v. Jackson, 700 F.2d 181, 189 (5th Cir.1982), for instance, the rationale for entry was danger. The circumstances in our case differ materially from those in Jackson. Here the officers had no information indicating that anyone would be in the house, much less anyone who might be armed. In Jackson, by contrast, the agents had grounds to believe other persons present might entail danger because a suspect had told the agents that the two other participants were armed; even after arresting two unarmed suspects, the agents could point to articulable facts supporting their belief that other, armed suspects might be present.
The circumstances here are a far cry from those surrounding a search we upheld in Whitten,4 There the facts suggested a serious danger to the officers’ safety from armed members of the drug ring (believed to be in the same remote area) or from an explosion. 706 F.2d at 1014. The danger to the officers’ safety was great enough and immediate enough that their protective sweep was likely to reduce, rather than raise, the overall level of danger. Our case is different. The facts do not suggest serious danger. Hoyos and the women, including his wife and mother, were unarmed, and the officers did not have information that co-conspirators elsewhere were armed or that the house contained weapons. Whatever danger the officers might have thought they faced, they necessarily exposed themselves to greater danger by breaking into the house: when Deputy Ro-della broke the lock with a hand-held ram, any persons inside would have become afraid themselves and would have had time and notice to prepare an attack on the officers.
Finally, in Wiga we invoked law dealing with residences to establish that agents had a “legitimate concern that other occupants may have been concealed within the motor home.” 662 F.2d at 1333. But to explain why those occupants might have posed a danger to the officers — a danger justifying the sweep — we invoked law dealing with automobiles, not residences. In particular, we quoted a rule from United States v. Berryhill, 445 F.2d 1189 (9th Cir.1971):
*1146It is inconceivable that a peace officer effecting a lawful arrest of an occupant of a vehicle must expose himself to a shot in the back.... All companions of the arrestee within the immediate vicinity, capable of accomplishing a harmful assault on the officer, are constitutionally subjected to the cursory ‘pat down’.
Wiga, 662 F.2d at 1332 (quoting Berryhill, 445 F.2d at 1193). On this basis we concluded that the “sweep of the motor home was a reasonable search incident to Wiga’s arrest.” 662 F.2d at 1333.
In Wiga the protective sweep stands on a search incident to arrest theory applied to a vehicle. In our case the protective sweep stands on its own. The officers may not cite a per se rule that establishes danger making up exigent circumstances. To enter the house, the officers needed an independent basis for their reasonable belief that someone on the premises might pose a threat to their safety. No independent basis exists.
C
The Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness test balances privacy interests against exigent circumstances. Both sides of the balance favor a distinction between a protective sweep after arrest outside a house and a protective sweep after arrest inside a house. The distinction is especially keen when, as in this case, officers break through a locked door to conduct their protective sweep.
Regardless of such a distinction, case law does not justify the officers’ decision to enter Hoyos’s house. The officers cannot point to articulable facts supporting a belief that anyone else might have been in the house, much less anyone who would destroy evidence or pose a threat to the officers’ safety.
I concur in parts I and IV of the majority’s opinion, but I dissent from parts II and III. The protective sweep of Hoyos’s house was an unreasonable search. Because the search warrant was based on evidence discovered during the protective sweep, the warrant was invalid. I would reverse the conviction, remand the case for trial, and instruct the district court to exclude evidence from Hoyos’s house.

. In particular, the Supreme Court has never decided the question. Most recently, in Segura v. United States, 468 U.S. 796, 804, 104 S.Ct. 3380, 3385, 82 L.Ed.2d 599 (1984), the Court declined to address the Second Circuit’s conclusion that exigent circumstances did not justify a search after arrest outside the residence; the government had dropped its argument to the contrary.

. The government does not claim the officers entered the house in hot pursuit. Compare United States v. Stubblefield, 621 F.2d 980, 982 (9th Cir.1980).

. Wiga is weak authority for another reason: the case, dealing with the search of a motor home, is a sport. Though the court in Wiga stated that "the 'automobile exception’ is inapplicable to a motor home,” 662 F.2d at 1329, the court painstakingly applied law dealing with automobiles — as well as that dealing with residences — to uphold the entry under exigent circumstances. See 662 F.2d at 1331-32.

. This search is separate from another search, discussed before, that we struck down in Whit-ten. See 706 F.2d at 1016.