Court Opinion

ID: 9715781
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:14:25.103648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:37.748335
License: Public Domain

Douglas, J.
I concur with my brother Batchelder only with regard to the standing result in this case but not the automatic standing rationale. Yet that does not end the matter for me. In this case, the trial judge would have suppressed the evidence but for the defendants’ lack of standing, on the ground that the police officers’ warrantless search had violated the fourth amendment. Because he held that the defendants had no standing, however, the trial judge allowed the evidence to be introduced. I would uphold the trial court’s decision to admit the evidence despite his ruling on the standing issue, because the officers acted in good faith.
On Sunday afternoon, March 23, 1980, two teenagers reported to the police that they had discovered a pile of guns lying in a hole covered with plastic in the woods in Chesterfield, New Hampshire. The next day, four police officers accompanied the two teenagers to the spot. The guns were not there, but the area around the hole was matted down and there were pieces of plastic on the ground. Tracks went down a path into the woods. The teenagers then told the police that they knew of a cabin in the vicinity, hidden from the road.
The police then followed the path to the cabin. From photographs introduced into evidence, it would be generous to call the structure a cabin. It is a small, wooden shack with covered windows more akin to something teenagers might make out of odds and ends of wood. While there was some indication of occupation, a chain saw was wedged against the outside of the door. The police approached the shack with their guns drawn, one officer called out, and then opened the door. He reported that many guns were stored inside. Another officer, who said he was familiar with the guns stolen from Trader John’s, reopened the door to see if he *221could identify any of the guns. When he reported that he could, the police then decided to obtain a search warrant.
Two officers were left to guard the cabin while the two other officers went to get the warrant. The police used the warrant only to remove the guns. While they were doing this, the apparent owner of the cabin, James Scranton, arrived and was arrested. The two defendants before us were arrested later.
The defendants filed a motion to suppress the use of the 260 firearms as evidence against them in their trial for possessing stolen property, to wit, the guns. The trial judge held a full evidentiary hearing and found that the warrantless search had violated the fourth amendment. He would have suppressed the evidence, but because he ruled that the defendants were without standing to raise the issue, the evidence was deemed to be admissible. The State first conceded at oral argument that the search was improper but that concession is not necessarily binding on us.
I conclude that the fourth amendment was not violated because the police officers who conducted the search acted in good faith. The police in this case were justifiably concerned about the fact that two teenagers had found firearms in the woods. See Rhode Island v. Innis, 446 U.S. 291, 294-95 (1980) (discussion among police officers that children could be killed if they found the defendant’s loaded gun). At the time the search began, the police thought the weapons were under plastic covering in the woods, not in a building, and thus likely to be in plain view. Given the dangerousness of the objects sought, the opening of the cabin door was not such an intrusion as to be a bad-faith violation of the fourth amendment. Thus, the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 655 (1961), does not apply. See United States v. Williams, 622 F.2d 830, 840-47 (5th Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1127 (1981) (Gee and Vance, JJ.). Prior to Mapp v. Ohio, Justice Cardozo observed that “the criminal is to go free because the constable has blundered.” People v. Defore, 242 N.Y. 13, 21, 150 N.E. 585, 587, cert. denied, 270 U.S. 657 (1926).
Not even a judge, in the position of an officer on the beat or on patrol, could give instantaneous legal advice that would be sure to withstand State and federal judicial scrutiny years down the road, as the seizure issue wound its way through the appeal process. One author, discussing Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443 (1971), queried “how the police of Manchester, New Hampshire, could have been expected to know that the Constitution required more of them than they had done when the members of the [United States] Supreme Court, after studying the matter for more than five months, had such great difficulty in deciding the mat*222ter.” See Wright, Must the Criminal Go Free if the Constable Blunders?, 50 Tex. L. Rev. 736, 745 (1972). Expecting our police to perform analyses at 3 A.M. on a street corner, which are beyond our own capabilities, is absurd, illogical, and harmful to the practical administration of justice. See, e.g., State v. Theodosopoulos, 119 N.H. 573, 580, 409 A.2d 1134, 1139 (1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 983 (1980) (police must act expeditiously in emergency).
Federal officers play only a miniscule role in the criminal justice scheme. If the federal judiciary wishes to enforce the exclusionary rule in order to supervise federal officers, it should be free to do so; however, it is unfair and unrealistic to impose the rule in street crime settings under our scheme of federalism.