Court Opinion

ID: 9663907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:54:50.401678+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:58.917241
License: Public Domain

HEFFERNAN, CHIEF JUSTICE
(dissenting). Because the illegal actions of the Kenosha police detectives in this case were both purposeful and flagrant, the evidence obtained from Anderson's statement and consent to a third search of his garage should have been excluded. Accordingly, I dissent.
The question in this case is whether the disputed evidence was obtained by exploitation of the illegal searches or by means sufficiently distinguishable to be purged of the primary taint. In Brown v. Illinois, 422 *454U.S. 590 (1975), the U.S. Supreme Court set forth three factors relevant to such an inquiry:
the temporal proximity of the arrest and the confession, the presence of intervening circumstances, and, particularly, the purpose and flagrancy of the official misconduct....
Id. at 603-04 (citations omitted) (emphasis added). In this case, as in Brown, "[t]he illegality [of the police misconduct] had a quality of purposefulness." Id. at 605.
The first illegal search was based upon the "consent" of the Andersons' 15-year-old daughter. The majority concluded without analysis that the detectives' reliance on that "consent" was not "so improper as to be labeled conscious or flagrant misconduct that would lead us to exclude the defendant's statement and evidence gained by the third search." Majority op. at 452. The majority ignores the fact that the detectives obtained the "consent" through a ruse in the first place: they asked the girl whether they could search the garage to determine whether anything of the Andersons' had been stolen.
The notion of "consent through chicanery" or "consent through deception" is unsettling. As one court noted, " [a] ruse entry, by its very nature, runs contra to the concept of an intelligent consent or waiver." United States v. Phillips, 497 F.2d 1131, 1135 n.4 (9th Cir. 1974). Of course, the concept of "consent" in the fourth amendment context is different than the concept of waiver. While in certain circumstances police may be justified in using deceptive tactics to obtain consent to a search, see 3 Wayne R. LeFave, Search and Seizure, sec. 8.2(n), at 228-35 (1987), deceitfully obtaining third party consent from a child is surely not among them.
*455The fourth amendment generally prohibits the war-rantless entry of a person's home to search for specific objects. Illinois v. Rodriguez, 110 S. Ct. 2793, 2797 (1990). However, warrantless searches have been held to be reasonable in situations where voluntary consent has been obtained from either the individual whose property is searched or from a third party with common authority over the premises. Id. In Schneckloth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 248 (1975), the U.S. Supreme Court stated: " [T]he Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments require that [the State] demonstrate that the consent was in fact voluntarily given, and not the result of duress or coercion, express or implied." The ruse perpetrated upon Anderson's 15-year-old daughter smacks of implied coercion, not of voluntariness. Moreover, the record is clear that this child did not have authority over the premises common with the defendant or his spouse.
The focus when reviewing a warrantless search is on the "reasonableness" of the search. Rodriguez, 110 S. Ct. at 2800. I find a warrantless search of an individual's property based upon "consent" obtained by tricking a 15-year-old child to be unreasonable. The fact that the detectives did not seize anything at that time, but instead began their ill-fated attempt to obtain a search warrant, indicates their awareness that the search was illegal, and indicates the purposeful nature of their conduct.
The second illegal search was conducted pursuant to a faulty "warrant" which the detectives served upon Mrs. Anderson. The warrant was actually one detective's affidavit. Regarding the second search, the majority concludes:
Although there is no record of an actual search warrant ever being issued in this case, the police made a substantial attempt to conform to the requirements *456of the fourth amendment. While the absence of a search warrant is a serious defect, when we consider that an assistant district attorney reviewed the affidavit and participated in obtaining the judge's signature, we conclude that it was neither purposeful nor flagrant misconduct by the police detectives that would lead us to exclude the defendant's statement and evidence gained by the third search.
Majority op. at 452.
Regardless of the "substantial" efforts of the police to obtain a warrant, they did not obtain one. Police officers and detectives must be held to know the difference between an affidavit attesting their belief that probable cause for a search exists, and a search warrant, which is a judicial determination that the facts alleged are sufficient to spell out probable cause for the search. The detectives' attempt to obtain consent from Mrs. Anderson, and their dogged efforts to track down Anderson before they executed the affidavit, evince the fact that they knew they did not have a judicially-issued warrant. As was said in Brown, the course of conduct in this respect had a "quality of purposefulness" that demonstrated knowledge that the document was not a judicial warrant. Yet the detectives falsely informed Mrs. Anderson that they had a search warrant, and searched the Andersons' home and garage. This is misconduct both purposeful and flagrant.
Regardless of the temporal proximity of the illegal searches and Anderson's statement and consent to a third search, and any intervening circumstances, the flagrancy of the police misconduct in perpetrating the initial illegal searches warrants application of the exclusionary rule. Along with the factors of Brown, the court must consider whether the purposes of the exclusionary rule — deterring unlawful police conduct and protecting *457the integrity of the judicial system — are served by exclusion. Brown, 422 U.S. at 599-600. Exclusion of all of the evidence obtained in this case will serve to deter future police misconduct. The obverse is also true: the majority's failure to exclude the evidence in this case may encourage police misconduct, perpetrated in the hope of obtaining a subsequent confession. See New York v. Harris, 495 U.S. 14, 110 S. Ct. 1640, 1650-51 (1990) (Marshall, J., dissenting).
The "oily tie" joke in the police car, along with the Miranda warnings, do not support the majority's conclusion that the police did not exploit the illegal searches. The record in this case is silent as to the exact manner and time that Anderson was confronted with the seized stolen items. One inference which may be drawn from the record, including what the majority concludes to be the non-threatening circumstances revealed by the "oily tie" conversation, is that Anderson cooperated with a false expectation of leniency. The use of illegally obtained evidence combined with subtle suggestions of leniency to evoke a confession constitutes "exploitation" of an unconstitutional search. Because the state failed to prove that the police did not exploit the illegal searches, I conclude that Anderson's statement and evidence gained by the third search were tainted and should have been excluded.
I respectfully dissent and would affirm the carefully reasoned decision of the court of appeals. I am authorized to state that Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson joins this dissenting opinion.