Court Opinion

ID: 9738874
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:04:46.468473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:08.905648
License: Public Domain

STATON, Judge,
dissenting.
I agree that police officers may justifiably conduct a protective sweep of areas of a house other than the particular area where an arrest is made when they have *1090reason to believe that other persons on the premises may pose a threat to their safety. The police officers’ belief in the existence of the threat to their safety must, however, be based upon specific and articulable facts known to them at the time the protective sweep is initiated.
The circumstances of the case before us did not warrant a protective sweep. For while Officer Colby did have reason to believe that there was another person on the premises, he had no reason to believe that that person was a threat to his safety. Accordingly, I dissent.
The majority opinion relies exclusively on the following “evidence” in concluding that Officer Colby, as he stood in the kitchen, had reason to believe that other persons on the premises might pose a threat to his safety: (1) Officer Colby had previously experienced problems effecting arrests; (2) Officer Colby was informed of the presence of another person; and (3) Officer Colby “thought it necessary” to locate that person.1
The fact that Officer Colby had experienced problems with different people at different locations on different occasions is in no way logically or legally relevant to the matter in dispute. While the previous problems may have given Officer Colby reason to be alert, they did not give him reason to believe that he would experience similar problems at Williams’ house.
The fact that Officer Colby was informed of the presence of another person shows only that he had reason to believe that another person was present. It does not show that Officer Colby had reason to believe that the person was a threat to his safety.
Similarly, Officer Colby’s conclusory opinion that he “thought it necessary” to locate Williams is nothing more than an “inarticulate hunch,” and our courts have consistently refused to sanction police searches based merely on such hunches.
The majority opinion thus explicitly sanctions protective sweeps whenever an arrest is made at a hoüse and the police are told that another person is present. The implications and ramifications of that holding are shocking. The justification for a protective sweep is that it allows the police to protect themselves against attacks from persons in rooms other than that where the arrest is made. Are the police in any less danger or is the threat of such attacks any less when the police are not informed of the presence of other persons? Wouldn’t the police, because of the element of surprise, actually have been in more danger if Smith had not advised them of Williams’ presence? The rationale of the majority opinion, then, would allow protective sweeps whether or not the police had knowledge of the presence of other persons.
And what are the limits of the protective sweeps? Presumably the police will be allowed, for example, to open doors and check closets, because someone who might be hiding in a closet and might have a gun is just as potentially dangerous as someone who might be standing in the middle of a room and might have a gun.
The majority opinion, therefore, obliquely sanctions the canvassing of an entire house whenever the police make an arrest at the house. I cannot concur in the carte blanche which the majority opinion bestows upon the police or in the resulting emasculation of the Fourth Amendment.
The State’s argument that the heroin was discovered in plain view by the officer who peered into the bedroom window must also fail.
In order to properly invoke the plain view doctrine, the officer discovering the evidence must have rightfully been in the position where he had that view. Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971), 403 U.S. 443, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 29 L.Ed.2d 564. And while the discovery of evidence in plain view does not, in and of itself, constitute a search, Alcorn v. State (1970), 255 Ind. 491, 265 N.E.2d 413, *1091very often the conduct of the officer which puts him in a position to make the discovery does constitute a search. In those instances, the legality of the plain view seizure is dependent upon the validity of the search.
The test for determining whether the police conduct in question constitutes a search is whether that conduct violated the defendant’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Katz v. United States (1967), 389 U.S. 347, 88 S.Ct. 507, 19 L.Ed.2d 576. The conduct of the officer who originally took a position at the front door consisted of leaving the area of the front door, walking around the house, approaching a window and then bending over and peering through a waist-high three-inch gap between the bottom of the almost completely-drawn window shade and the window sill. Clearly, that conduct constituted a search. Because that search was not conducted pursuant to a warrant and because the circumstances do not fit into one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement, the seizure of the heroin cannot be justified as having been discovered in plain view by that officer.
The motion to suppress should have been granted.

. I do not read the majority opinion as attaching any significance to the fact that Smith was holding a knife when she answered the door. She was using the knife to prepare dinner . a fact that the police became aware of as they entered the kitchen.