Court Opinion

ID: 9758016
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:07:56.201433+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:46.593275
License: Public Domain

Quinn-Brintnall, J.
¶49 (dissenting) — Because Ronald Steen was not required to open the door to officers who did not have a warrant, complied with requests that he raise his hands and keep them in full view after officers lawfully entered the trailer through a window, and merely exercised his right to remain silent when officers requested that he provide his name and date of birth, in my opinion, the evidence is insufficient as a matter of law to support the jury’s verdict finding Steen guilty of obstructing a law enforcement officer under RCW 9A.76.020. I respectfully dissent.
¶50 Here, Deputies Andrew Finley and Tanya Terrones properly responded to a domestic disturbance involving “one female, possibly two males.” Clerk’s Papers (CP) at *815340. After quickly locating a woman outside of a locked trailer, and observing that she had no sign of physical injuries, the officers looked around the property for other individuals. Finding no one, they then knocked on the trailer door for 15 to 20 minutes while loudly announcing their presence and asking anyone inside to come out with their hands up. At no time did the officers ever indicate that anyone inside was under arrest or that the officers had a warrant to search the trailer. Eventually, the officers lawfully entered the residence without a warrant, to conduct a welfare-type check and ensure that there was not a third party injured in the home requiring assistance. Upon entering the trailer, the officers noticed Steen near the back bedroom area and ordered him to raise his hands. He complied, asking, “[W]hat do you want? I was just sleeping.” CP at 348. He further informed officers that nobody else was inside the trailer. Finley then handcuffed Steen and put him in the back of his patrol car while he and Terrones continued to investigate the reported dispute. When asked to identify himself by providing his name and date of birth, however, Steen remained silent. Steen was eventually charged with obstructing a law enforcement officer under RCW 9A.76.020 and found guilty at trial.
¶51 To sustain a conviction for obstruction under RCW 9A.76.020, the State had to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, both that (1) Steen willfully hindered, delayed, or obstructed a law enforcement officer and (2) the law enforcement officer was acting in the discharge of his or her official powers or duties. Although I agree with the majority that the officers properly investigated the reported disturbance and lawfully entered the residence under their community caretaking authority to ensure there was no third person requiring assistance and that the evidence is sufficient to support the second element of the charged crime, I cannot agree that Steen’s decision to decline to cooperate was unlawful.
¶52 Mindful of our Supreme Court’s recent opinion in State v. Williams, 171 Wn.2d 474, 251 P.3d 877 (2011), the *816majority wisely avoids contending that Steen’s refusal to identify himself to officers is “conduct” punishable under the obstruction statute.13 Instead, the majority argues that the jury could have found that Steen’s “ignoring the officers’ lawful orders to exit the trailer with his hands up” amounted to obstruction. Majority at 801. In support of this contention, the majority cites to a footnote in Williams reading, “ ‘In [State v. Contreras, 92 Wn. App. 307, 316, 966 P.2d 915 (1998)] the defendant not only gave a false name but refused to comply with orders to keep his hands in view and exit the vehicle’ ” (majority at 802 (quoting Williams, 171 Wn.2d at 484 n.10)), then argues that it must follow Contreras because “here, Steen refused to comply with the officers’ orders to answer the trailer’s door and to exit with his hands up.” Majority at 802. In Contreras, however, officers responded to a call about a possible vehicle prowl and found the defendant behind the steering wheel of a car. 92 Wn. App. at 309. Worried for their own safety, officers demanded that the suspect exit the vehicle and, when he did not, forcibly removed him. Contreras, 92 Wn. App. at 309-10.
¶53 Courts have recognized that asking someone to exit a vehicle, especially upon suspicion of both criminal activity and danger to responding officers, is a de minimis intrusion of a citizen’s right to be free from arbitrary searches or *817seizures. See, e.g., Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 111, 98 S. Ct. 330, 54 L. Ed. 2d 331 (1977); State v. Kennedy, 107 Wn.2d 1, 9, 726 P.2d 445 (1986). Thus, the officers in Contreras were well within the scope of their rights to demand that the defendant exit the vehicle. Steen, however, was not operating or sitting in a motor vehicle in a public right of way. Instead, he was quietly staying inside the trailer. Thus, it is highly questionable as to whether, absent a warrant, Steen had a duty to comply with the officers’ orders to exit the trailer in the same way as the officers’ demands in Contreras.14 Both the common law and the laws of Washington afford special protection to citizens against arbitrary searches of their homes.15 In Miller v. United States, for example, the Supreme Court attributes William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, as stating, “ ‘The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake . . . but the King of England cannot enter.’ ” 357 U.S. 301, 307, 78 S. Ct. 1190, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1332 (1958), (quoting The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 379 (2d ed. 1953)). Division One of this court noted, in State v. Hatcher, 3 Wn. App. 441, 446, 475 P.2d 802 (1970), that “the protective constitutional moat which surrounds every man’s home—his castle—may not be indiscriminately drained either by police policy or judicial fiat.” (Footnote omitted.) And in its recent decision in Kentucky v. King, _ U.S. _, 131 S. Ct. 1849, 1862, 179 L.Ed. 2d 865 (2011), the United States Supreme Court states,
*818When law enforcement officers who are not armed with a warrant knock on a door, they do no more than any private citizen might do. And whether the person who knocks on the door and requests the opportunity to speak is a police officer or a private citizen, the occupant has no obligation to open the door or to speak. Cf. Florida v. Royer, 460 U.S. 491, 497-498, 103 S.Ct. 1319, 75 L.Ed.2d 229 (1983)[ ] (“[H]e may decline to listen to the questions at all and may go on his way”).
(Second alteration in original.) Here, whether Steen heard the officers knocking or not, he had no obligation to allow them to enter the residence without a warrant.
¶54 Officers Finley and Terrones lawfully entered the trailer without a warrant pursuant to their community caretaking function, to ensure that nobody inside was hurt. I agree with the majority that in the circumstances here presented, such a warrantless entry was justified. The majority, however, now asserts that when an officer lawfully is relieved of the burden of obtaining a warrant for a search or seizure, and a citizen declines to cooperate voluntarily with that officer’s directives, that citizen must necessarily be willfully (and unlawfully) hindering or delaying the law enforcement officers in performing their duties. Apart from the language in the Williams court’s footnote previously discussed, the majority provides no support for this proposition.16 Our exigent circumstances jurisprudence has never required affirmative action on the part of citizens, whether they are suspected of criminal activity or not. Instead, it focuses on the behavior of law enforcement officers (e.g., whether it is appropriate to enter a home when in hot pursuit of a criminal or whether an officer can forcibly enter a home, while attempting to execute a warrant, out of concern that a suspect is destroying evidence).
¶55 Extending the reasoning of the majority, citizens are now guilty of obstructing justice every time they refuse to *819assist the police in performing their community caretaking function. This simply cannot be the state of the law. In the present circumstances, Steen certainly did not aid officers in their community caretaking function. The law does not require this of him. But once officers lawfully let themselves into the trailer, Steen made no effort to obstruct the performance of their duties and accurately informed them that there was no one else in the trailer, i.e., no second man as originally reported. As a matter of law, in my view, the evidence presented is insufficient to prove that Steen committed the offense of obstructing a law enforcement officer in violation of RCW 9A.76.020 and I would reverse.17
Review denied at 173 Wn.2d 1024 (2012).

 In deciding Williams, the Washington Supreme Court states, ‘We hew to our jurisprudential history of requiring conduct in addition to pure speech in order to establish obstruction of an officer.” 171 Wn.2d at 485. Though I agree in the present circumstances that Steen’s silence did not amount to conduct, this dichotomy between “conduct” and “pure speech,” is problematic. The United States Supreme Court, for instance, has long used the example that “[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52, 39 S. Ct. 247, 63 L. Ed. 470 (1919). And the Washington Supreme Court, in City of Kennewick v. Keller, confirmed the illegality of “fighting words,” words “ ‘which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.’ ” 11 Wn. App. 777, 785, 525 P.2d 267 (1974) (quoting Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 572, 62 S. Ct. 766, 86 L. Ed. 1031 (1942)). Likewise, a citizen intentionally misdirecting law enforcement officers pursuing a fleeing felon by telling them the felon went north when he had seen him travel south engages in the conduct of obstruction by misdirection by use of words even if he does not engage in conduct by pointing his arm.

 I do not intend to imply that it is in any way unlawful for officers to knock on a person’s door and request to come inside or ask the occupant to come outside. Officers can always seek consensual contact with citizens and should do so when there is reason to believe another citizen requires their assistance. Such a request though, is simply that—a request—and does not carry any coercive authority requiring a citizen to respond.

 Whether Steen actually owned the trailer is irrelevant. The necessary implication of the majority’s opinion—that private citizens have an affirmative obligation to assist police when they are performing their community caretaking function'—will, in the future, apply to homeowners whether the majority intended this result or not. Though this may make sense from a public policy standpoint, it is not the court’s place to make such a determination.

 The majority does make passing reference to State v. Little, 116 Wn.2d 488, 806 P.2d 749 (1991). That case, however, involved a suspect of a crime in progress fleeing from an officer and is inapposite.

 Moreover, if alerting officers to his identity or presence inside the trailer could implicate him in a no-contact order violation, Steen had a Fifth Amendment right to decline to do so. The majority relies on Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Court, 542 U.S. 177, 124 S. Ct. 2451, 159 L. Ed. 2d 292 (2004), to assert that Steen had no such right because “ ‘[ajnswering a request to disclose a name is likely to be so insignificant in the scheme of things as to be incriminating only in unusual circumstances.’ ” Majority at 809 (quoting Hiibel, 542 U.S. at 191). The Hiibel Court, though, shortly thereafter states, “Still, a case may arise where there is a substantial allegation that furnishing identity . . . would have given the police a link in the chain of evidence needed to convict the individual of a separate offense. . . . We need not resolve those questions here.” 542 U.S. at 191. Steen’s circumstances could present just such a case and, in result, the majority’s reliance on Hiibel to dismiss all Fifth Amendment claims is unfounded.