Court Opinion

ID: 9655944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:26:41.737887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:24.359257
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
Irrespective of whether the entry of the police officers onto the enclosed porch area was without defendant’s consent, I am convinced that the record fully supports the district court’s finding that the subsequent entry into the home’s living area was made with her consent.
The type of construction that features an enclosed porch placed as a buffer to entry into the living area of a home is quite common among older homes in this state. Such porches serve as a place where conversations may be had with delivery persons, peddlers, bill collectors, and others who come to the house with the intention of briefly conversing with the occupants. The entry onto the porch, which is criticized in the majority opinion, occurred in Iowa in December. It does not seem out of the ordinary that the discussions between the police and the defendant took place inside the enclosed porch area rather than through an open door, with the police standing in the cold.
In Schneckbth v. Bustamonte, 412 U.S. 218, 93 S.Ct. 2041, 36 L.Ed.2d 854 (1973), the Court discussed the element of volun-tariness in the consent-to-search context. In discussing its past decisions, involving that issue, the Court stated:
[I]f under all the circumstances it has appeared that the consent was not given voluntarily — that it was coerced by threats or force, or granted only in submission to a claim of lawful authority— then we have found the consent invalid and the search unreasonable.
Schneckloth, 412 U.S. at 233, 93 S.Ct. at 2051, 36 L.Ed.2d at 866. There is no evidence that the officers who engaged defendant in conversation on the porch employed any force. Nor did they issue any threats other than to advise her that if she did not consent they would seek a warrant. The message which that statement conveys is that the police had no right of entry without a warrant. This negates any suggestion that their entry into the living portion of the home was under claim of lawful authority.
Because I find that the challenged entry into defendant’s home was freely consented to, I would affirm the decision of the court of appeals and the judgment of the district court.
NEUMAN, J., joins this dissent.