Court Opinion

ID: 9603928
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:11:28.764351+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:18.174466
License: Public Domain

PHIPPS, Judge,
concurring specially.
Although I wholeheartedly agree with the reversal of the trial court’s denial of Randolph’s motion to suppress, I think that the *403bright-line approach adopted by the majority misconstrues the guiding decision of the United States Supreme Court in United States v. Matlock,23 loses sight of the overall reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment, is not required in order to provide reasonably clear guidance to law enforcement, and holds the potential for unduly hampering police.
1. “The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the ‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures’ and requires that search warrants be supported by probable cause.”24
I cannot agree with the bright-line rule adopted by the majority, primarily because
[t]he test of reasonableness under the Fourth Amendment is not capable of precise definition or mechanical application. In each case it requires a balancing of the need for the particular search against the invasion of personal rights that the search entails. The determination of fourth-amendment reasonableness requires consideration of the totality of circumstances in a particular case, weighing all of the factors suggesting constitutional violation against all of those indicating validity.25
In United States v. Matlock,26 the defendant jointly occupied a residence with a woman. The police arrested the defendant in the front yard without asking him for permission to search the residence. Instead, the police asked his housemate and she consented. Holding the one joint occupant’s voluntary consent to search the premises to be valid against the co-occupant, the Supreme Court in Matlock crafted the following rule:
[W]hen the prosecution seeks to justify a warrantless search by proof of voluntary consent, it is not limited to proof that consent was given by the defendant, but may show that permission to search was obtained from a third party who possessed common authority over or other sufficient relationship to the premises or effects sought to be inspected.27
*404In a footnote, the Court then explained that
[cjommon authority is . . . not to be implied from the mere property interest a third party has in the property . . . but rests rather on mutual use of the property by persons generally having joint access or control for most purposes, so that it is reasonable to recognize that any of the co-inhabitants has the right to permit the inspection in his own right and that the others have assumed the risk that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched.28
The majority interprets Matlock as standing “for the proposition that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, there is a presumption that a co-occupant has waived his right of privacy as to other co-occupants.” Matlock, however, by its express terms holds that co-occupants have “assumed the risk” that one of their number might permit the common area to be searched. Matlock says nothing whatsoever about any “presumed” waiver of privacy as to other co-occupants. I would think that the presumption would be that an individual who has probably committed a crime would not consent to a search of his property. Moreover, it would seem that if the Court in Matlock had intended to give a present co-occupant an automatic veto over another co-occupant’s consent, as held by the majority, it would have required the police to ask the defendant in that case whether he objected to the search.
In reliance on a line of cases exemplified by May v. State29 and State v. Gonzalez-Valle,30 Randolph asks us to establish the bright-line rule which the majority has adopted. In support of another bright-line rule allowing one occupant to give a valid consent to a search of jointly occupied or controlled property even where the other occupant refuses to consent or objects to the search, the State cites such cases as People v. Sanders,31 City of Laramie v. Hy song,32 United States v. McAlpine,33 and People v. Haskett.34
I cannot agree with either extreme. A broad rule precluding the police from conducting a warrantless search if both spouses or co-occupants are present and one objects is premised on a reading of the Fourth Amendment as prohibiting police from undertaking a war*405rantless search of a person’s property if such person expressly denies his consent to such a search.35 This, in my opinion, is a misinterpretation of the constitutional text. By its terms, the Fourth Amendment does not require a warrant to search premises in the absence of consent. Rather, what the Fourth Amendment requires is that warrants be supported by probable cause. What the Fourth Amendment prohibits is unreasonable searches.
A bright-line rule requiring the police to obtain a warrant anytime a spouse or co-occupant is present on the premises and voices an objection to the search loses sight of the overall reasonableness requirement of the Fourth Amendment and might have precluded the search in a case like Sanders. In that case, a woman complained that during an argument with the man with whom she lived, he had physically assaulted her, threatened to kill her, and fired a rifle into the back window of her truck as she fled. She showed the police the truck, told them they might find the defendant at their home, and gave her consent to a search of the home. The court held that the fact that the defendant was present when the police searched the residence and did not consent to the search did not vitiate the absent co-occupant’s consent. I agree with Sanders, for reasons given in McAlpine. In McAlpine, police received a telephone call from a woman who reported that she was being held against her will and threatened with guns by two men who had been sexually assaulting her. The responding officers went to the residence and were admitted by the woman. She told one of the officers that she regularly slept in one of the bedrooms and had personal property scattered throughout the residence. The court held that the woman was qualified to give effective consent to search the premises, holding that crime victims who cohabit with their abusers are entitled to give consent to a search in their own rights.
In Hysong, the husband was a suspect in a recently reported incident of child abuse outside the home. When a police officer arrived at his house, his wife let them enter and check the child’s condition over her husband’s objection. Under those “exigent circumstances,”36 the officer’s warrantless entry into the house with the consent of one spouse was properly held legal even though the other spouse was present and objected. In Haskett, police arrested the defendant at his home after his sister reported that he had raped and stabbed her, and murdered her two sons, at her home. The defendant’s wife consented to the officers’ request that they be allowed to enter the house. According to the defendant, one of the officers asked *406for his consent, but he refused to give it. Although the “exigent circumstances” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement was not applicable in Haskett, the court properly refused to adopt a rule vitiating the consent of one co-occupant when the other is present and protests the entry or search where the police officers had fresh evidence that the defendant had committed several violent crimes.
Although I, therefore, must reject the bright-line rule suggested by Randolph and adopted by the majority, I similarly cannot agree with an unqualified rule, such as that urged by the State, allowing one spouse or occupant to give a valid consent to a search of jointly occupied premises even though the other objects. In May, after the defendant’s wife moved out of their residence but before their divorce, she arranged for the police to gain entry to the home and search it while the defendant was away. Under those facts, the court held that although the wife retained a community property interest in the residence and a key to it, she had no right to consent to a warrantless search of the house because her husband’s personal privacy interest was superior to her property interest. Similarly, in GonzalezValle, a husband and wife were having marital difficulties, and she was angry and jealous over his affair with another woman. As a result, she informed the police that her husband had a gun and some narcotics in his possession. She met them at her home and consented to a warrantless search of the bedroom occupied by her husband. Under those circumstances, the court held that the wife had no right to waive her husband’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
This case is closer to May and Gonzalez-Valle than to Sanders, Hysong, McAlpine, and Haskett. Here, the wife summoned the police to the marital residence because, upon her return after being separated from her husband, he had spirited their child away. Her complaint was resolved when the child was safely returned to the residence. At that point, the police were faced with cross-accusations by bickering spouses. According to the husband, the wife was under the influence of alcohol. According to the wife, the husband was using illegal drugs. Testimony given by Sergeant Murray indicated that he could verify neither accusation. Consequently, the officer had no hard evidence that a crime had even been committed. Under those circumstances, the matter should have been submitted to a neutral and detached magistrate for a probable cause determination before the police searched Randolph’s house over his objection.
The case-by-case analysis I propose provides the police with reasonably clear guidance. If there is some objective verification that a crime has been committed, the police may search the common areas of a residence with the consent of one occupant or spouse even if *407another co-occupant or spouse objects. If one co-occupant or spouse simply summons the police to a residence and accuses his or her co-occupant or spouse of illegal conduct, the matter should be submitted to a neutral and detached magistrate if another co-occupant or spouse is present on the premises and objects. As always, in cases of doubt and in the absence of exigent circumstances, a warrant should be obtained.
In denying Randolph’s motion to suppress, the trial court relied on Kendrick v. State37 In Kendrick, detectives were called to the scene of a robbery shortly after its occurrence and viewed a videotape of it. The detectives’ investigation then led them to the defendant’s house. They were admitted by his wife. When they encountered the defendant in the house, they recognized him as the robber depicted in the videotape. After questioning him, they arrested him. The defendant contended that the detectives’ presence in his house at the time of his arrest was illegal because he had told them to leave. We held that the defendant was legally arrested during an entry into his home pursuant to the consent of his wife, who shared the house with him and thus had common authority over it. We found that the defendant, in fact, had not told the detectives to leave and that, in any event, only his wife could revoke her consent.
In Kendrick, the police were thus involved in the investigation of a robbery when events were fresh, and they entered the defendant’s house with his wife’s permission without objection by him and acquired probable cause for an arrest immediately upon seeing him. For these reasons, Kendrick is distinguishable from this case. Mat-lock is controlling and, in my opinion, supports the conclusion that in this case the consent to the search by the one spouse was not valid against the objection of the other spouse who was also present on the premises.
2. Although I cannot agree with much of what is said in Division
1 of the majority opinion, I find the reasoning employed in Divisions 2 and 3 compelling, and I fully concur in those holdings.

 415 U. S. 164 (94 SC 988, 39 LE2d 242) (1974).

 Stanford v. State, 251 Ga. App. 87, 89 (1) (553 SE2d 622) (2001).

 (Citations and punctuation omitted.) City of East Point v. Smith, 258 Ga. 111, 112 (1) (365 SE2d 432) (1988).

 Supra.

 Id. at 171; Atkins v. State, 254 Ga. 641, 642 (331 SE2d 597) (1985).

 Matlock, supra at 171, n. 7; Smith v. State, 264 Ga. 87, 88 (2) (441 SE2d 241) (1994); see State v. West, 237 Ga. App. 185 (514 SE2d 257) (1999).

 780 SW2d 866 (Tex. App. 1989).

 385 S2d 681 (Fla. App. 1980).

 904 P2d 1311 (Colo. 1995).

 808 P2d 199 (Wyo. 1991).

 919 F2d 1461 (10th Cir. 1990).

 30 Cal.3d 841 (640 P2d 776) (1982).

 See Lawton v. State, 320 S2d 463, 465 (Fla. App. 1975).

 Hysong, supra at 204-205.

 211 Ga. App. 599, 600 (2) (440 SE2d 53) (1993).