Court Opinion

ID: 9647521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:38:56.154262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:50.428689
License: Public Domain

FARRELL, Associate Judge, Retired,
concurring:
When, following the suppression hearing testimony, the trial judge asked appellant’s counsel “what’s the search,” counsel said that it was the retrieval of the gun from the closet by appellant, something he had done under “threat” by the police that otherwise they would obtain a warrant and search the entire house, if necessary. The judge ruled that appellant’s own actions were not a search — that merely by giving him a choice that included avoiding a search, the police had not made him an agent of the government.
We now reverse, however, on the different ground that the warrantless entry of the house, undeniably a “search,” was unlawful because effected over appellant’s refusal to consent to the entry. Apparently uncertain himself whether that issue had been preserved, appellant’s counsel did not *190raise it either in his brief or at oral argument in this court.
I nonetheless agree that we should not consider the point forfeited. At trial, appellant’s counsel directed the court to Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 126 S.Ct. 1515, 164 L.Ed.2d 208 (2006), and his written motion to suppress contained enough language — though barely so — to inform the court that appellant was challenging the unconsented entry as part of the “search of the house.” As for appellant’s omissions on appeal, the government concedes that our decisions are not uniform in imposing strict forfeiture of issues not raised by a defendant until prompted by the court in supplemental briefing, as in this case. Compare, e.g., Anthony v. United States, 935 A.2d 275, 282-83 n. 10 (D.C.2007), with Rose v. United States, 629 A.2d 526, 535-36 (D.C.1993). The entry and consent issues have now been briefed, and the government does not argue that the trial record is too undeveloped to permit a decision on the applicability of Randolph to this case.
On the merits, I agree that Randolph requires suppression, although I confess to uncertainty about the reach of that decision. Appellant was a mature adult residing in the home — “an inhabitant of shared premises” — and thus not a dependent within “some recognized hierarchy, like a household of parent and child,” 547 U.S. at 114, 126 S.Ct. 1515, such that the police could ignore his refusal to consent in favor of the mother’s permission.1 The government points to his admission (in the motion to suppress) that his mother owned the house, and seeks to limit Randolph to situations involving “parties with equal authority” in the property sense, such as “co-tenants.” But the Court there used words such as “co-tenant,” “co-inhabitant,” and “fellow occupant” or “resident” more or less interchangeably; and its precise holding was that “a warrantless search of a shared dwelling for evidence over the express refusal of consent by a physically present resident cannot be justified as reasonable as to him on the basis of consent given ... by another resident.” Id. at 120, 126 S.Ct. 1515. As appellant shared residency of the home with his mother, yet was not a “child” in any sense connoting a “societal understanding of superior and inferior,” id. at 114, Randolph did not allow the police to disregard his refusal to consent. A contrary rule would encourage police to ignore refusal by a person with apparent authority to deny entry and to look instead for another, more compliant resident with a “superior” right to consent, when Randolph implies that the incentives should run the other way — toward obtaining a search warrant if no exigent circumstances exist.

. Nor was there evidence that his privacy expectation in the home was limited to a particular room or rooms, as in the case of a boarder or room-renter.