Court Opinion

ID: 9657322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 20:20:39.904014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:43.467997
License: Public Domain

*71ANN WALSH BRADLEY, J.
¶ 44. (dissenting). Today's decision undermines the distinction between the consent search and the automobile exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. The majority takes established consent search principles and crossbreeds them with the principles underlying the automobile exception to create a heretofore unknown "hybrid" exception to the warrant requirement: the third-party automobile consent search. The result is an expansive concept of a third party's authority to consent to search the property of the passengers of a vehicle that is both unprecedented and constitutionally unsupportable.
¶ 45. At issue today is the authority of a third party to grant consent to search the property of another under the Fourth Amendment. No new formulations are needed to answer this question.
¶ 46. When examining the legitimacy of a third-party consent search, the established first inquiry is whether the third party who granted consent to search "possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected." United States v. Matlock, 415 U.S. 164, 171 (1974); State v. Kieffer, 217 Wis. 2d 531, 547, 577 N.W.2d 352 (1998). If the third party is without actual authority, the consent may be valid if it was reasonable for an officer to conclude that such authority exists. Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 188-89 (1990); Kieffer, 217 Wis. 2d at 548.
¶ 47. The automobile exception to the warrant requirement is not at issue in this case. The warrant-less search of an automobile is justified only when the police have probable cause to believe that an automobile contains evidence of a crime. State v. Caban, 210 Wis. 2d 597, 607, 563 N.W.2d 501 (1997). This excep*72tion to the warrant requirement is grounded in the reduced expectation of privacy one has in an automobile and the government's interest in preventing the evidence for which probable cause exists from being whisked away while a warrant is being obtained. California v. Carney, 471 U.S. 386, 390—93 (1985).
¶ 48. Based solely on the fact that the consent search at issue was that of an automobile, the majority disregards the established line of analysis for consent searches. Rather than address the realities of Miller's common authority over the jacket or his relationship to it, the majority invokes the specter of an individual's reduced expectation of privacy in an automobile and an alleged overriding governmental interest. By imbuing consent search principles with those underlying the automobile exception, the majority attempts to justify the leap it makes from the driver's possessory authority over the vehicle to authority to consent to the search of items belonging to all persons within the interior of the vehicle.
¶ 49. The majority's "mix and match" approach to Fourth Amendment doctrine ignores the fundamental differences between the automobile exception to the warrant requirement and consent searches. On the one hand, the automobile exception is premised on the notion that a certain quantum of evidence, i.e., probable cause, in conjunction with other considerations justifies the state's intrusion into an individual's sphere of privacy without a warrant. On the other hand, the power to conduct a consent search flows not from a governmental interest deriving from a level of suspicion that overrides an individual's privacy interests, but rather flows from the individuals themselves.
¶ 50. Courts examining the validity of a consent search are not concerned with expectations of privacy *73or competing state and individual interests. The relevant considerations are the voluntariness of the consent and the authority to grant consent. The court's decision today should simply be an inquiry into the latter.
¶ 51. Moreover, the concerns implicated under the automobile exception cannot be severed from probable cause. The Supreme Court explained the automobile exception in California v. Carney:
[T]he pervasive schemes of regulation, which necessarily lead to reduced expectations of privacy [in an automobile], and the exigencies attendant to ready mobility justify searches without prior recourse to the authority of a magistrate so long as the overriding standard of probable cause is met.
471 U.S. at 392 (emphasis added).
¶ 52. In the Fourth Amendment context, no governmental interests are relevant in the absence of probable cause (or in other contexts, reasonable suspicion). The governmental interest specific to the automobile exception is grounded in the risk that evidence or contraband for which probable cause exists will be driven away before a warrant can be obtained. Id. at 390. Logically, that governmental interest cannot exist in the absence of probable cause.
¶ 53. More importantly, by the very nature of a consent search, no governmental interests are implicated. The focus of a third-party consent search inquiry is not on the individual's relationship vis-a-vis the state, but on the individual's relationship to the property searched vis-a-vis the third party. The dispositive question is whether there is common authority to consent. No consideration of governmental interests arises in answering this question.
*74¶ 54. Similarly, a reduced expectation of privacy has no bearing in the consent search context. Again, the issue is the power to approve of the search of another's property. Implicit in the majority's holding is that one's expectation of privacy is inversely proportional to the authority of others to grant consent. I fail to see, and I am not told, how the two bear any relation to one another.
¶ 55. Rather than address these analytical inconsistencies, the majority concludes that because this case involves a search of an automobile the automobile exception principles are "highly relevant." However, in the absence of probable cause, none of these considerations is relevant and the automobile exception cases cited by the majority are wholly inapplicable.
¶ 56. Notably absent from the majority's discussion of its "hybrid" approach is any citation or analysis suggesting that the Supreme Court would sanction such an approach. Also missing from the majority opinion is a single citation to any other court that would support such an approach.
¶ 57. Applying principles sanctioned by the United States Supreme Court, there is no evidence in the record to suggest that Miller had any common authority over or any special relationship to Matejka's jacket. Nor is there anything to suggest that it was reasonable for Officer Forsythe to believe that Miller possessed such authority. In fact the evidence points to the contrary. Officer Forsythe knew the jackets that he was handing out belonged to the passengers and not to Miller himself.1
*75¶ 58. Even if I were to accept the framework constructed by the majority in this case there are too many unanswered questions under the new automobile consent search exception to the warrant requirement. While it is suggested that an exception may exist for "private, personal property," we are given no answer as to why a jacket does not qualify for that exception.
¶ 59. An even larger question looms as to why it is incumbent upon the individual to speak up to curtail a driver's consent to search, even where the officer conducting the search is aware that the property belongs to a passenger. The majority puts the onus on the individual to confront the officer, rather than requiring the officer to carry the simple burden of requesting the consent of the passengers.
¶ 60. The majority's approach muddles Fourth Amendment principles and in the end allows an otherwise unreasonable search to be deemed reasonable. Employing an unprecedented and unconstitutional approach, the majority improperly expands a driver's authority to consent to the search of a passenger's personal property. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
¶ 61. I am authorized to state that SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, CHIEF JUSTICE and WILLIAM A. BABLITCH, J. join this dissenting opinion.

 I also conclude that the State's alternative arguments in support of the search fail to establish that the search was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The State's alternative arguments are premised upon a valid frisk of the jacket as part *75of a Terry search of the vehicle or Matejka or part of the consent pat-down of Matejka. Yet nothing in the record suggests that it was immediately apparent to Officer Forsythe that the contents of Matejka's jacket pocket was contraband. Therefore For-sythe's removal of the contents of the pocket exceeded the permissible bounds of a pat-down search under the plain feel doctrine of Minnesota v. Dickerson, 508 U.S. 366 (1993).