Court Opinion

ID: 9655649
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:18:34.831878+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:20.955683
License: Public Domain

FOSHEIM, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
The majority holds that an arrest was not necessary, under Terry, Adams and Mimms, to justify the warrantless search of the automobile. Terry, Adams and Mimms are not authority for such a sweeping exception to the warrant requirement.
Pennsylvania v. Mimms did not involve an automobile search. Mimms was driving a car which a policeman stopped to issue a traffic summons for expired license plate. The policeman told Mimms to get out of the car and show him his driver’s license. When Mimms got out the policeman observed a bulge in Mimms’ sports jacket. The policeman, fearing a weapon, frisked Mimms, found a loaded gun and arrested him. Mimms was convicted of carrying a concealed firearm without a license. The first issue in Mimms was whether the order to get out of the car, issued after the driver was lawfully detained, was reasonable and thus permissible under the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court said yes because it reduced the risk of injury to the officer and was a de minimis intrusion on a driver’s personal liberty. The second issue was whether the search of Mimms for weapons was permissible under the Fourth Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld the search based on Terry v. Ohio. Since the first issue raised in Mimms is not an issue in the case before us and the Mimms court did not consider whether the police officer could have extended his search for weapons into the car, Mimms does not support the majority’s position. An extremely important fact in Mimms, absent from the case before us, is that Mimms was arrested. If the policeman had searched the car, such search undoubtedly would have been upheld as a search incident to the prior arrest, for this is what Adams v. Williams held.
In Adams v. Williams the validity of the search and seizure of items from an automobile was in question. A known informant told a policeman that a person seated in a nearby car was carrying narcotics and had a gun at his waist. The policeman approached the car and told the driver to *278open the car door. Instead, the driver rolled down the window, whereupon the policeman immediately reached in and grabbed a gun from the driver’s waistband. The driver was arrested for unlawful possession of a pistol. The policeman then searched the car and found heroin and other weapons. Defendant was convicted of illegal possession of a handgun and possession of heroin. The Supreme Court upheld the initial seizure of the handgun based on Terry v. Ohio and held that the warrantless search of the car was lawful as a search incident to arrest.
Terry v. Ohio did not involve an automobile' search. Terry and his friend were standing on a street corner when they were first observed by a detective. The detective testified that he thought the two were acting suspiciously because each man in turn walked past a certain store and stared in the store window and then returned to the street corner to confer with the other. This happened a total of about 12 times. The detective testified that based on his 39 years of police experience he thought they were “casing a job, a stick-up” and his experience told him that if they were planning a stick-up that they were probably armed. The detective stopped the two and asked their names. When the response wasn’t adequate he patted down their outer clothing, finding a gun in the outer coat pocket of each man. Terry and his friend were then arrested and were later convicted of carrying concealed weapons. The Supreme Court said the issue was “whether it is always unreasonable for a policeman to seize a person and subject him to a limited search for weapons unless there is probable cause for an arrest.” 392 U.S. at 15, 88 S.Ct. at 1877 (emphasis added).
The issue in the case before us is not whether the police officer could order Lu-xum out of the car and take the knife away from him, it is whether finding a pocket knife on a suspected drunk driver justifies the warrantless search of the car for weapons the passengers in the car might have. Terry v. Ohio does not support the car search; its holding is very narrow, limited to the search of the person suspected of criminal activity. In Terry it was acknowledged that there was not probable cause for an arrest. Terry states:
We merely hold today that where a police officer observes unusual conduct which leads him reasonably to conclude in light of his experience that criminal activity may be afoot and that the persons with whom he is dealing may be armed and presently dangerous, where in the course of investigating this behavior he identifies himself as a policeman and makes reasonable inquiries, and where nothing in the initial stages of the encounter serves to dispel his reasonable fear for his own or others’ safety, he is entitled for the protection of himself and others in the area to conduct a carefully limited search of the outer clothing of such persons in an attempt to discover weapons which might be used to assault him. Such a search is a reasonable search under the Fourth Amendment, and any weapons seized may properly be introduced in evidence against the person from whom they were taken.
The Terry court also said:
Under our decision, courts still retain their traditional responsibility to guard against police conduct which is overbearing or harassing, or which trenches upon persona] security without the objective evidentiary justification which the Constitution requires, (emphasis added)
392 U.S. at 30-31, 15, 88 S.Ct. at 1884-85, 1876. The majority not only fails to apply Terry prerequisites to the present facts (did the police officer observe the passengers acting unusually, leading him to reasonably conclude that they might be engaged in criminal activity and armed and presently dangerous, etc.) but also erroneously broadens the permissible scope of a Terry stop and frisk from the outer clothing of a person to the inside of a car. The Michigan Supreme Court recently reversed a lower court decision that had applied the stop- and-frisk principles of Terry to the search of a car interior. Terry, the majority said, “authorized a limited warrantless protective *279search of the person during an investigatory stop. * * * The limited authority to search was emphasized by the [Terry] Court when it said ‘[t]he sole justification of the search * * * is the protection of the police officer and others nearby, and it must therefore be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer.’ ” People v. Long, 413 Mich. 461, 320 N.W.2d 866, 869 (1982). The Michigan court stated that the officer’s entry into the vehicle cannot be justified under the principles set forth in Terry which authorized only a limited pat-down search of a person suspected of criminal activity, not the search of an area. This, of course, is in line with what the United States Supreme court said in Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85, 93-94, 100 S.Ct. 338, 343, 62 L.Ed.2d 238 (1979):
The Terry case created an exception to the requirement of probable cause, an exception whose ‘narrow scope’ this Court ‘has been careful to maintain.’ Nothing in Terry can be understood to allow a generalized ‘cursory search for weapons’ or, indeed, any search whatever for anything but weapons. The ‘narrow scope’ of the Terry exception does not permit a frisk for weapons on less than reasonable belief or suspicion directed at the person to be frisked [.] (footnote omitted, emphasis added)
The conference opinion also cites State v. Strickland in support of its approval of the warrantless search of the ear. But Strickland justified the warrantless search of the vehicle on recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement: search incident to arrest, the plain view doctrine, and the automobile exception. None of those exceptions, or any other recognized exception, are present in this case.
Under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Art. VI, § 11 of the South Dakota Constitution a warrantless search and seizure is per se unreasonable unless it falls within one of the “jealously and carefully drawn,”1 “strictly circumscribed”2 exceptions to the warrant requirement. A heavy burden is on the State to prove such exception. Arkansas v. Sanders, 442 U.S. 753, 99 S.Ct. 2586, 61 L.Ed.2d 235 (1979). The State has offered no evidence to support its warrant-less search of the automobile. The orders to suppress were therefore properly granted and should be affirmed.
I am hereby authorized to state that Justice DUNN joins in this dissent.

. Jones v. United States, 357 U.S. 493, 499, 78 S.Ct. 1253, 1257, 2 L.Ed.2d 1514 (1958).

. Terry, 392 U.S. at 26, 88 S.Ct. at 1882; Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 2413-14, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978).