Court Opinion

ID: 9428599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:13.317424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.417579
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice White and Justice Marshall join,
dissenting.
Unless supported by a warrant issued upon probable cause, entry into a home to conduct a search is 'per se unreasonable, “subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967). In this case the Court of Appeals purported to identify and apply a “security check” exception to the warrant requirement which, as I understand the opinion below, would allow warrantless entry into a home following an arrest outside, if the arresting officers possess a reasonable belief that third persons are inside and aware of the arrest, “so that they might destroy evidence.” 638 F. 2d 507, 531. The exception thus stated not only authorizes the police to enter a home without a warrant in circumstances far less compelling than we have recognized, but permits law officers, in determining the time and manner of executing an arrest, to contrive their own exigency and thereby avoid the necessity of procuring a warrant before entering the home. This case illustrates the potential danger of this exception to *984Fourth Amendment protection, and surely the Court ought not let the decision stand without plenary review.1
r — l
The search at issue arose out of the investigation of a cocaine distribution ring by the New York Drug Enforcement Task Force. Officers of the Task Force followed a suspected member of the ring to a building in Brooklyn; a store occupied the first floor of the building, while the three floors above each contained one apartment. The officers took up surveillance outside the building. Lights were visible only on the fourth floor. In the course of the evening, the officers twice stopped persons leaving the building, discovered cocaine in their possession, and made arrests. Some time later they *985observed three men leaving the building, stopped them, brought them around the corner, and held them in custody. The officers asked what apartment they had been in” One of the detainees replied that they had been visiting a woman in the second-floor apartment, but would not give her name. Upon request, however, he agreed to accompany the officers to that apartment. As they approached the entrance, the officers saw petitioner exiting the building, recognized him as a known cocaine dealer, and placed him in custody with the others.
With the assistance of their detainee, the police persuaded the occupants of the second-floor apartment to open the door. The court below described the ensuing scene as “tumultuous,” as the officers, guns drawn, immediately entered and fanned out to search the apartment for cocaine amidst the screams of the landlady, her mother, and her baby. Ultimately recognizing that they had entered and searched the wrong apartment, the officers announced their intention to climb to the fourth-floor apartment and enter through the window from the fire escape, prompting the landlady to produce a key.
The officers found no one in the fourth-floor apartment, but they did discover several items of drug paraphernalia, as well as one pound of cocaine said to be in plain view in an open foyer closet. These items were admitted into evidence in the course of petitioner’s trial for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. The District Court did suppress, however, a number of additional items discovered by the officers in the course of their 16-hour warrantless habitation of the premises, concluding that these items had been discovered in the course of a search which exceeded the permissible bounds of a security check.
The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the officers’ entry and cursory search of the apartment fulfilled the requirements of the security check exception as applied in that *986Circuit. The court found support for the officers’ belief that the fourth-floor apartment contained suspects and evidence in the fact that the police had initially been diverted away from that apartment by their detainees. Additional support for the presence of persons in the apartment was found in the fact that one of the detainees had come to the street, despite the coolness of the evening, wearing only a shirt, pants, and slippers, and without a key in his possession. The reasonable belief that if other persons were in the apartment, they knew of the arrest, rested on the location of the arrest and the commotion which resulted from the search of the second-floor apartment.
II
The Court of Appeals sought support for its recognition of an exception to the warrant requirement for a “‘security check’ or ‘protective sweep’ incident to a lawful arrest” in Chimel v. California, 395 U. S. 752 (1969). 638 F. 2d, at 530. In Chimel we held that police may not routinely search a residence as an incident to a lawful arrest on the premises. In order to ensure the safety of the arresting officer and to prevent the destruction of evidence, however, we recognized that police may, as an incident to the arrest, lawfully search the area within an arrestee’s immediate control. Building on this rationale, several courts have allowed officers engaged in an arrest in a dwelling, to conduct a “quick sweep” for other persons on the premises who might pose a danger to the police.2 But as the Court of Appeals itself recognized in this *987case, whatever the merit of such a sweep where the police are otherwise lawfully on the premises, “[different considerations come into play . . . when a defendant is arrested outside his residence and the government seeks to justify an entry into the home for a security check.” 638 F. 2d, at 531. Nevertheless, noting that other courts have permitted a sweep into the home in search of persons following an arrest outside,3 the Court of Appeals sustained the validity of the warrantless entry and initial search here based on nothing more than the officers’ “reasonable belief” that there were additional persons in the apartment who were aware of petitioner’s arrest.
Despite the currency of the doctrine in the lower courts, no decision of this Court supports the existence of a general “security check” exception to the warrant requirement. Quite to the contrary, even before Chimel we held that “a search ‘can be incident to an arrest only if it is substantially contemporaneous with the arrest and is confined to the immediate vicinity of the arrest.’” Shipley v. California, 395 U. S. 818, 819 (1969) (per curiam), quoting Stoner v. California, 376 U. S. 483, 486 (1964). As we noted in Shipley, “the Constitution has never been construed by this Court to allow the police, in the absence of an emergency, to arrest a person *988outside his home and then take him inside for the purpose of conducting a warrantless search.” 395 U. S., at 820. Indeed, our precedents can more reasonably be read as interpreting the Fourth Amendment to bar the warrantless entry of a residence predicated solely on the belief that persons on the premises, knowing of the arrest, might destroy evidence. See Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U. S. 30 (1970).
We have, of course, recognized that a warrantless entry is permissible in an exigent circumstance. See Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 393 (1978). But even assuming that the need to preserve evidence could provide a basis for a finding of exigent circumstances sufficient to allow the police to enter a home without a warrant, cf. Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757, 770 (1966), the Constitution surely requires a far more substantial showing of exigency than was made here: Not only must there have been probable cause to search, but there must also have been a “reasonable belief,” based on articulable facts, that the destruction of evidence was imminent; and further, there must be the assurance that the emergency giving rise to the warrantless entry could not responsibly have been avoided. See United States v. Rosselli, 506 F. 2d 627 (CA7 1974). Because from all appearances the warrantless entry in this case can be justified neither as a search incident to an arrest nor as compelled by exigent circumstances, and because the court below enunciated a broad exception to the warrant requirement not recognized by any decision of this Court, and which can all too easily become “enthroned into the rule,” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U. S. 56, 80 (1950) (Frankfurter, J. dissenting), I would grant certiorari and set this case for argument.

 As Justice Stevens notes, ante, at 977, Judge Kearse’s opinion for the Court of Appeals describes in considerable detail the factual background pertinent to petitioner’s claim here. In addition, the opinion clearly states the legal standard believed applicable, and applies that standard in appraising the police conduct in question and the ruling of the District Court. But this in my view makes this case a particularly good vehicle for the exercise of our certiorari jurisdiction: the facts developed by the Court of Appeals suggest that a more restrictive standard respecting the circumstances under which warrantless entry of a home is constitutionally permitted would have produced a contrary ruling on petitioner’s motion to suppress; and the factual analysis of the Court of Appeals would be most helpful to this Court in defining a standard meaningful to police officers in the execution of their responsibilities, and capable of consistent application in the courts.
While there is some evidence suggesting that petitioner had no proteetible interest in the fourth-floor apartment, I do not share Justice Stevens’ concern whether petitioner had standing to contest this search. It is apparent to me that any possible question which was or could have been raised in that regard was resolved by the Court of Appeals in favor of petitioner. But whether that question, or other considerations identified by Justice Stevens, or any number of other factors not suggested by him, persuaded my colleagues against the exercise of our certiorari jurisdiction here, quite obviously my own view is that this is a very appropriate case for plenary review.

 See United States v. Gardner, 627 F. 2d 906 (CA9 1980); United States v. Spanier, 597 F. 2d 139 (CA9 1977); United States v. Cravero, 545 F. 2d 406 (CA5 1976), cert. denied sub nom. Miller v. United States, 429 U. S. 1100 (1977); United States v. Gepulonis, 530 F. 2d 238 (CA1), cert. denied, 426 U. S. 908 (1976); United States v. Rich, 518 F. 2d 980 (CA8 1975), cert. denied, 427 U. S. 907 (1976); United States v. Looney, 481 F. 2d 31 (CA5), cert. denied, 414 U. S. 1070 (1973); United States v. Cristophe, 470 F. 2d 865 (CA2 1972), cert. denied sub nom. Panica v. United States, 411 U. S. 964 (1973). See also Chimel v. California, 395 U. S., at 775 (White, J., *987dissenting) (possible removal of evidence should justify search following arrest in residence). But see United States v. Gamble, 473 F. 2d 1274 (CA7 1973).

 Several of the cases have allowed a security search where police possessed a reasonable apprehension of violence from within the house as they executed an arrest outside. See United States v. Baker, 577 F. 2d 1147 (CA4), cert. denied sub nom. Weinstein v. United States, 439 U. S. 850 (1978); United States v. Bowdach, 561 F. 2d 1160 (CA5 1977); Hopkins v. Alabama, 524 F. 2d 473 (CA5 1975). At least two federal cases other than this one have ratified warrantless security searches premised solely on an asserted desire to preserve evidence. See United States v. Fulton, 549 F. 2d 1325 (CA9 1977); United States v. McLaughlin, 525 F. 2d 517 (CA9 1975), cert. denied, 427 U. S. 904 (1976). See also Thomas v. Parett, 524 F. 2d 779 (CA8 1975); United States v. Rubin, 474 F. 2d 262 (CA3), cert. denied sub nom. Agran v. United States, 414 U. S. 833 (1973).