Court Opinion

ID: 9558860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:18:02.496821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:38.585369
License: Public Domain

CONCURRING OPINION BY
LEVINSON, J.
In my view, today’s opinion of the court contains two central and controlling propositions. The first is that "a person is seized, for purposes of article I, section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution, when a police officer approaches that person for the express or implied purpose of investigating him or her for possible criminal violations and begins to ask for information.” Opinion of the court at 567. The second is that “an investigative encounter can only be deemed ‘consensual’ if (1) prior to the start of questioning, the person encountered was informed that he or she had the right to decline to participate in the encounter and could leave at any time, and (2) the person thereafter voluntarily participated in the encounter.” Id. at 571 (emphasis added).
In order to avoid any potential doubt on the subject, I write separately to emphasize two significant corollaries to our holdings, one of which is expressly stated in the opinion of the court and the other clearly implied.
First, there can be no “consent” to a “seizure” once the seizure has occurred in the constitutional sense, that is, *574after the seizure has already been effected. Id. at 569 n.5. Therefore, where a seizure coincides with or precedes “interaction between the police and [an] individual,” id., it follows tautologically that the seizure cannot be constitutionally justified on the ground that the individual has “consented” to it.
The second corollary derives from our recognition that “the determination as to whether a reasonable person would feel free to leave is an objective question while the determination as to whether the [person] consented to the questioning is a subjective one[.]” Id. at 565-66 n.3 (emphasis added). By its very nature, however, the subjective component of the inquiry regarding consent cannot be a matter of whether the seized person has been informed that he or she has the right to decline to participate in the encounter and is free to leave at any time. After all, the person either has or has not been so informed. In the present case, Kearns was not so informed, and thus, as a per se matter, he “could not have ‘consented’ to the seizure” of his person. Id. at 571-72. Accordingly, the subjectivity of the “consent” determination springs by definition from the question whether, after being given the pre-requisite advice by the police, the person “voluntarily participate^] in the encounter.” Id. at 571.
It therefore follows that, even if a “seized” person is given the prerequisite advice by the police, the court must still determine on the record before it whether the person has participated in the encounter “voluntarily.” If the participation is voluntary, then the person has “consented” to the encounter; if it is not, then the person has not given “consent.” Whether a person has “consented” to an investigative encounter is a question of law that is dependent upon the facts and circumstances of the particular case, and, for that reason, would be subject to the *575“clearly erroneous” standard of review. AIG Hawaii Ins. Co. v. Estate of Caraang, 74 Haw. 620, 633, 851 P.2d 321, 328 (1993) (citations omitted); Coll v. McCarthy, 72 Haw. 20, 28, 804 P.2d 881, 886 (1991) (citations omitted).