Court Opinion

ID: 9686619
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 15:59:00.463074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:44:30.276798
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The seizure and search of the defendant under the facts and circumstances of this case was impermissible under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Six law enforcement officers — two *604deputies from the Hennepin County Sheriffs office, two deputies from the Ramsey County Sheriffs office and two officers from the Roseville Police Department — had spent approximately an hour searching the second floor apartment of Tim Ledford, pursuant to warrant, when defendant caught their attention from the parking lot below, indicating, by honking his horn, gesturing, and tossing a plastic shaving bottle cap against the window, that he wanted in. By this time the officers had the four occupants of the apartment under arrest and had finished searching the apartment, finding two bags of stolen jewelry but no firearms or weapons. Deputy Marie Ballard, who was in street clothes as were five of the six officers, went down to the first floor at Deputy Allan Anderson’s request to let in the young man whom two of the officers later testified was nicely dressed and whom none of the officers knew or had expected to find at the apartment in connection with their search for stolen property-
Deputy Ballard unlocked the security door for defendant and, without asking his name, followed him up the stairs as he chatted about Rick’s laziness and lack of a telephone. Defendant walked in the slightly-opened door of Ledford’s apartment and was encountered in the hallway by Deputies Anderson and Lucas who identified themselves as police officers and asked who he was. The two officers were close in front of him, Ballard had entered the hallway behind him. Defendant said he did not have to tell them who he was and turned, the officers agreed, as if to leave the apartment. At this point Deputy Lucas grabbed defendant’s left arm, Deputy Anderson grabbed his right shoulder and they put him against the wall and searched him. As Deputy Anderson said at the omnibus hearing, “I wanted him to have a pat down search, you know, it was just a rou-.”
It was not a routine stop and frisk. It was a seizure and search similar to that we prohibited in State v. Fox, 283 Minn. 176, 168 N.W.2d 260 (1969). In Fox, police officers, executing a warrant to search an apartment for stolen merchandise, searched Fox, who was present on the premises, for weapons and in his wallet found marijuana. There we said that “a mere exploratory search of the person of a defendant for evidence is violative of Fourth Amendment rights and that the test of reasonableness may not lie in an unpar-ticularized suspicion or hunch.” Fox, 283 Minn. at 179-80, 168 N.W.2d at 262.
In the case of Timothy Gobely, the officers lacked probable cause to search the defendant at the moment he entered the’ apartment. They had no knowledge nor reason to believe he was connected with any criminal activity. When they seized him and spread him against the wall, they knew at most that he was apparently acquainted with the residents of the apartment. Neither did the officers have a reasonable, articulable suspicion that he was armed and dangerous nor did they fear for their safety as required by Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968) and Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40, 88 S.Ct. 1889, 20 L.Ed.2d 917 (1968), so as to justify a frisk. As Judge Forsberg noted below, “the officers could have either refused to go down the stairs to open the door or questioned the defendant at that time.” State v. Gobely, 351 N.W.2d 39, 41 (Minn.App.1984). See also, United States v. Clay, 640 F.2d 157, 162 (8th Cir.1981). The search was invalid. This result is not changed by the fact that the rings and the watch were observed during the course of the search.
I would affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.