Court Opinion

ID: 9723548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:19:37.783073+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:49.618477
License: Public Domain

GILBERT, Justice
(dissenting).
While I concur with the majority’s conclusion that if the police action here is considered an unlawful search, remand is appropriate, I respectfully write separately in dissent because I do not believe that the police engaged in an unlawful search. In this case, the police were responding to a missing persons report and were concerned for the welfare and safety of the Licaris. The Liearis had been reported missing for 3 days and appellant had left behind a suicide note. Nancy Licari’s mother and appellant’s sister informed the police that Nancy and appellant were renting a storage unit south of Isanti. The family allowed the police to look at the storage unit for clues as to the whereabouts of their missing family members. Accordingly, the police went to the unit with the permission of immediate family members who were acting on behalf of missing persons. Officer Ammend testified that he did not feel he was investigating a crime and hoped to find something in *257the storage unit to indicate where the Li-caris might have gone. In the process of undertaking a “cursory search for the family,” Ammend stumbled upon a crime scene and now, as a result of that innocent discovery, the appellant is asking that all evidence found not only at the crime scene, but all evidence discovered thereafter, be suppressed.
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution protect individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures. Absent exigent circumstances and probable cause, or consent, a warrantless entry and search is per se unreasonable, and violates the Fourth Amendment. See Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980); State v. Othoudt, 482 N.W.2d 218, 222 (Minn.1992). In addition to probable cause and exigent circumstances, this court also recognizes the “emergency exception” to the warrant requirement. See State v. Terrell, 283 N.W.2d 529, 532 (Minn.1979). We have stated that “[t]he police may enter a dwelling without a warrant if they reasonably believe that a person within is in need of emergency aid.” Othoudt, 482 N.W.2d at 223. During the course of legitimate emergency activities the police may seize any evidence that is in plain view. Terrell, 283 N.W.2d at 532.
To determine whether the “emergency exception” to the warrant requirement applies, this court uses an objective standard: “whether with the facts available to the officer at the moment of the seizure or search, would a person of reasonable caution believe that the action taken was appropriate.” Othoudt, 482 N.W.2d at 223. However, other jurisdictions also look to the subjective intentions of the police in determining when to apply the emergency exception. -See, e.g., State v. Mountford,
171 Vt. 487, 769 A.2d 639, 645 (2000) (requiring that the primary subjective motivation behind such warrantless searches be to provide emergency aid).
In United States v. Cervantes, the ninth circuit adopted a three-prong formulation of the emergency exception that includes a subjective prong. 219 F.3d 882, 890 (9th Cir.2000) (citing People v. Mitchell, 39 N.Y.2d 173, 383 N.Y.S.2d 246, 347 N.E.2d 607, 609 (1976)). For the emergency exception to be invoked, the following three-prong test must be satisfied:
(1) The police must have reasonable grounds to believe that there is an emergency at hand and an immediate need for their assistance for the protection of life or property. (2) The search must not be primarily motivated by intent to arrest and seize evidence. (3) There must be some reasonable basis, approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be searched.
Id. at 888 (emphasis added). The facts of Cervantes are as follows. Firefighters called the police when they smelled a strong chemical odor emitting from an apartment building. Id. at 885. After investigating, a police officer determined that the odor was coming from the appellant’s apartment, where the smell was the strongest. Id. at 886. The officer believed that the smell was methamphetamine, which he knew was highly explosive. Id. Fearing an explosion, the officer entered the apartment without the consent of the occupants. Id. Once inside the apartment, he found a substance he believed to be methamphetamine. Id. at 887. He promptly called for backup and evacuated the apartment building. Id. The defendant moved to suppress the evidence found as a result of the warrantless search. Id. at 887. The ninth circuit held that the *258emergency exception applied to the officer’s search of the apartment. Id. at 891.
The court in Cervantes stated that its justification for adopting the emergency exception stemmed from the police officer’s role as a community caretaker when responding to emergency situations, not the police officer’s role as criminal investigator. Id. at 889. Thus, there is no need for police officers to demonstrate probable cause that a crime has taken place when they are conducting a search pursuant to the emergency exception because they are not investigating a crime. See also Mountford, 769 A.2d at 645. The court in Cervantes also noted that the subjective motive of police officers is essential to safeguard citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights: “absent probable cause, examining a government actor’s motivation for conducting an emergency search provides a necessary safeguard against pretextual reliance on community caretaking interests to serve criminal investigation and law enforcement functions.” 219 F.3d at 890. Therefore, the subjective expectation of the police officer is an essential component of the emergency exception because “[t]he distinguishing feature of * ⅜ * emergency assistance searches is that they are generated from a desire to aid victims rather than investigate criminals.” Mountford, 769 A.2d at 645.
Based on the facts of the present case, the emergency exception to the warrant requirement may not be directly applicable. Here, the need to search the storage unit was less than immediate. There was, however, a heightened sense of urgency. Not only had the Licaris been missing for 3 days, but appellant had left a note hinting at suicide. More importantly, the police were clearly functioning in their role as community care responders as opposed to criminal investigators. Ammend admitted that he was not investigating a crime when he searched the storage unit. In fact, Ammend was responding with the consent of family members to search the storage unit for clues of the Licaris’ whereabouts. It is not unreasonable for a police officer, acting as a responsible public servant, in good faith, to look at the storage unit. The conduct of the police officer in this case, assisting a concerned family’s search for a missing loved one by accessing the missing person’s shared storage unit, should not be deterred. Under these specific facts, the emergency doctrine should be extended to cover the police officer’s innocent discovery of a crime scene while he was searching for a missing person. Courts from around the country have found warrantless entry reasonable when police are confronted with cases of missing persons. See People v. Wharton, 53 Cal.3d 522, 280 Cal.Rptr. 631, 809 P.2d 290, 324 (1991) (citing cases from California, New York, Arizona and Pennsylvania). When the police do not have probable cause to believe that they are going to a crime scene and are conducting a good faith search for missing persons, we should hold that under the emergency exception their actions do not amount to an unreasonable search or seizure.
Accordingly, I would affirm the district court on the grounds stated herein. The majority’s decision based on these facts has the unfortunate consequence of discouraging good faith efforts of peace officers to look for missing persons or even engage in search and rescue missions because they risk unintentionally coming across inculpatory evidence, which may have to be excluded in any subsequent criminal proceedings. This rule of law might not only relate to direct evidence viewed at the scene, but all evidence that was uncovered thereafter, see Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 488, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963), even though ultimately all of the evidence in question *259would have easily been properly collected within a short period of time.
Alternatively, if the actions of the officer are considered an unlawful search, I concur with the result reached by the majority that remand is proper and justified based on the procedural posture of this case. There are numerous facts in the record that more than reasonably support the inevitable discovery doctrine. Investigators had already obtained information about Nancy Licari’s credit cards and had put out a Minnesota Crime Alert notification for Nancy Licari, appellant, and their cars. Furthermore, the longer Nancy Li-cari was missing, the more probable it would be that the police, following standard investigative protocol, would not only aggressively continue looking for her automobile, but they would also check the use of her credit cards and find that her credit card was being used by her husband, a fact clearly shown on a videotape from the Target store.
While it is true that the discovery of Nancy Licari’s body at the storage unit on April 27, 1999, may have accelerated the apprehension of the appellant and the collection of further specific inculpatory pieces of evidence, there is nothing in this record or in any of the legal theories advanced by the appellant that would support a suppression of all evidence found thereafter. Even though all the parties concede that the police did not have probable cause to get a search warrant by April 27, in no time they would have had probable cause. The computer records at the storage unit in issue would show the comings and goings of appellant from the storage unit. In a relatively short period of time, Nancy Licari’s body or her DNA evidence would have been uncovered at the scene. Therefore, even if discovery of the body of Nancy Licari at the storage unit should be suppressed, there is no basis to support the contention that all of the other evidence uncovered was the fruit of an unlawful search, or that DNA evidence or the massive amount of blood on the floor of the storage unit should be suppressed. Upon remand, the two unanswered questions that need to be answered are: would the evidence have been inevitably discovered and what, if any, evidence should be suppressed.