Court Opinion

ID: 9550500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:36:08.359667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:39.926982
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Justice
(dissenting in part):
I respectfully dissent from that portion of the Court’s opinion which holds that the warrantless search of the entire house in question was constitutionally legitimate.
Appellant was arrested outside his house. His associate was arrested in a room just inside a door. Without a warrant and with no other legal justification, the officer proceeded from that room to other rooms in the house where seizures were made. The Court’s opinion seeks to justify that search and the seizures made without a warrant on the ground that “none was needed for the reason that all the evidence obtained was in plain view.” However, that statement is accurate only if a police officer may proceed from the room of an arrest and continue on through all the rooms of a house without a search warrant and seize whatever he finds in those rooms. The law does not support such a proposition.
The Supreme Court of the United States in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 764, 765, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2041, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1965), responded to a contention that it is reasonable to search a man’s house when he is arrested in it by stating:
But that argument is founded on little more than a subjective view regarding the acceptability of certain sorts of police conduct, and not on considerations relevant to Fourth Amendment interests. Under such an unconfined analysis, Fourth Amendment protection in this area would approach the evaporation point. It is not easy to explain why, for instance, it is less subjectively “reasonable” to search a man’s house when he is arrested on his front lawn — or just down the street — than it is when he happens to be in the house at the time of arrest.
In my view the holding in Chimel v. California, id., should be dispositive of the issue of unlawful seizure of items seized in portions of the house other than where the appellant’s associate was arrested. The Court in Chime1 in language applicable here, stated 395 U.S. at 768, 89 S.Ct. at 2043:
Application of sound Fourth Amendment principles to the facts of this case produces a clear result. The search here went far beyond the petitioner’s person and the area from within which he might have obtained either a weapon or something that could have been used as evidence against him. There was no constitutional justification, in the absence of a search warrant, for extending the search beyond that area. The scope of the search was, therefore, “unreasonable” under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the petitioner’s conviction cannot stand.
The majority opinion also bases its holding on the ground that “a search incident to a lawful arrest is permissible when reasonable and necessary to protect the arresting officer and to prevent the destruction of evidence.” However, the facts of this ease show that the search was neither reasonable nor necessary to protect the arresting officer nor to prevent the destruction of evidence.
At least one of the informants told the police that two “Mexicans” were bringing the heroin to the house in the morning, that they sold heroin during the day, and that they left at approximately five o’clock in the afternoon. The informants said that the two men did not live at that address.
*547One of the arresting officers testified that surveillance of the house was conducted over a period of several days. He personally watched the house on November 13, 14, 16, 17 and 18, the 18th being the day of the arrest. At first the surveillance occurred over a period of a few hours; then on November 16 an arresting officer conducted the surveillance from about eleven o’clock in the morning until shortly after four o’clock that afternoon. He returned to the house that night at approximately eleven o’clock and he saw that the house was completely dark and that it had no vehicles in front of it. He went up to the front door and knocked, getting no answer. He walked around the house and knocked on the back door, also getting no answer. On November 17, surveillance was started at eight o’clock in the morning. The same officer testified that at 8:30 the defendant and another “Mexican” drove up in the 1969 Ford, with the defendant driving. The passenger got out of the vehicle, went to the back door and into the house. The driver of the vehicle waited in the car, its motor still running, and after approximately two minutes, the curtains in the rear of the house were raised approximately four inches. At that time the defendant drove the car into the parking area. Only after the two men entered the house did other people begin to arrive and leave. The arresting officer conducted the surveillance until shortly after noon. The officer testified that he returned to the house at night a second time, again finding that the house was dark and had no vehicles around it.
On the morning of November 18, the day of the arrest, the arresting officers arrived at approximately 7:45 a. m. They saw no lights on in the house, no cars parked in front of it, and no signs of activity. At approximately 8:45 a. m., two men — not the two “Mexicans” — arrived, but they did not go into the house. Instead they sat talking with one another in one car until about 9:15 a. m. when the defendant and his passenger drove his car into the driveway. Just as the day before, the defendant’s passenger got out of the vehicle and went into the house. The defendant stayed in the automobile
with the motor running, and within a couple of minutes the curtains in the kitchen were raised approximately four inches. Seeing this signal, the defendant parked his car. The two men who had arrived prior to the defendant remained outside and at no time that morning did they go into the house. As the defendant started to go inside the house, the arresting officers ran up to him and arrested him. They also arrested the other two men who were waiting to go inside the house. At this point it was clear that no one except the defendant’s passenger ever went into the house.
The record is replete with evidence that the informant’s information was correct in that the house was used solely as a place where during the day people could come and purchase heroin. No one resided at the house, and the police surveillance clearly showed that no one was in the house prior to the arrival of the defendant and his passenger. The record is clear, therefore, that the police had no reason to believe any other person was inside that house at the time they arrested the defendant’s companion just inside the door of the house.
There was, therefore, no justifiable reason for the arresting officers not to have obtained a search warrant to search those rooms other than the one in which the arrest was made. The majority opinion, in my view, ignores long-established constitutional rules that require the issuance of a search warrant under the authorization of a magistrate.
MAUGHAN, J., having disqualified himself, does not participate herein.