Court Opinion

ID: 9757436
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:40:25.11736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:39.369836
License: Public Domain

Bogdanski, J.
(dissenting). I believe that Officer Scott violated the fourth amendment prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures” when he entered and searched the defendant’s automobile.
The majority opimon suggests, without, however, deciding, that Officer Scott’s entry with intent to remove the guitar was not subject to fourth amendment requirements because he did not have the specific intent of seeking evidence of a crime. The fourth amendment safeguards “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.” Invasions of the privacy of the individual do not vary in the severity of their impact with the specific intent of the intruders. In Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 93 S. Ct. 2523, 37 L. Ed. 2d 706, a police officer opened the trunk *140of an automobile in search of a police revolver, not because he sought evidence of a crime, but simply to protect the public. The United States Supreme Court assumed that the fourth amendment governed the officer’s conduct.1 In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889, the Supreme Court held police stop-and-frisk .activity within the scope of the fourth amendment and said (pp. 18-19 n.): “In our view the sounder course is to recognize that the Fourth Amendment governs all intrusions by agents of the public upon personal security, and to make the scope of the particular intrusion, in light of .all the exigencies of the case, a central element in the analysis of reasonableness. . . . This seems preferable to an approach which attributes too much significance to an overly technical definition of ‘search’ .... [T]he central inquiry under the Fourth Amendment [is] the reasonableness in all the circumstances of the particular governmental invasion of a citizen’s personal security. ‘Search’ and ‘seizure’ are not talismans.” Similarly, in Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S. Ct. 1727, 18 L. Ed. 2d 930, the United States Supreme Court held that the fourth amendment governed municipal housing inspections and said (p. 530): *141“It is surely anomalous to say that the individual and his private property are fully protected by the Fourth Amendment only when the individual is suspected of criminal behavior.” See also Mozzetti v. Superior Court, 4 Cal. 3d 699, 704-6, 484 P.2d 84, holding routine police inventory searches subject to the requirements of the fourth amendment.
In Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S. Ct. 992, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1067, the Supreme Court did not hold that entry into an automobile to remove and protect its contents did not constitute a “search” when the specific intent to discover evidence of a crime was absent. In that case, the defendant’s automobile had been lawfully impounded by the police as evidence of a robbery. A police officer opened one of the car doors in order to roll up a window for the vehicle’s protection. As he did so, the automobile registration card of the robbery victim became exposed to his plain view. The officer had no warrant to search the vehicle. The Supreme Court held that the registration card had not been discovered by means of an illegal search, because opening the door of a car lawfully in police custody to roll up a window with no intent to discover or seize its contents for any purpose at all was not a search within the meaning of the fourth amendment.
In the present case, Officer Scott entered the defendant’s vehicle, which was not in police custody, for the purpose of removing some of its contents. I therefore conclude that his conduct was subject to the requirements of the fourth amendment. Camara v. Municipal Court, supra. The fourth amendment prohibits searches and seizures which are “unreasonable.” As the majority recognizes, the funda*142mental rule is that a warrantless search of private property is per se “unreasonable” unless it is within one of a few established exceptions. Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, 439; Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454-55, 91 S. Ct. 2022, 29 L. Ed. 2d 564, rehearing denied, 404 U.S. 874, 92 S. Ct. 26, 30 L. Ed. 2d 120; Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, 528-29.
Some of the traditional exceptions are clearly inapplicable to the police intrusion in this case. For instance, Officer Scott did not obtain the defendant’s prior consent; Lewis v. United States, 385 U.S. 206, 87 S. Ct. 424, 17 L. Ed. 2d 312; nor did he have probable cause to believe that the defendant’s vehicle contained contraband or evidence of a crime; Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S. Ct. 280, 69 L. Ed. 2d 543; nor did he think that the automobile had been abandoned. Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 44 S. Ct. 445, 68 L. Ed. 898.
Another exception to the warrant requirement exists for a search incident to a valid arrest. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S. Ct. 2034, 23 L. Ed. 2d 685. But Officer Scott’s entry cannot be sustained under this exception either, because the defendant had already been arrested and released when Officer Scott entered the vehicle. Even assuming that his search would have been within the permissible scope of a search incident to an arrest for driving while one’s license is under suspension, “the search was too remote ... to have been made as incidental to the arrest.” Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 368, 84 S. Ct. 881, 11 L. Ed. 2d 777.
The majority opinion relies on the exception to the warrant requirement exemplified by Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58, 87 S. Ct. 788, 17 L. Ed. 2d *143730, rehearing denied, 386 U.S. 988, 87 S. Ct. 1283, 18 L. Ed. 2d 243, and Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 93 S. Ct. 2523, 37 L. Ed. 2d 706. In Cooper, the court upheld a warrantless search of an automobile lawfully impounded as evidence of a narcotics violation and awaiting forfeiture proceedings. The police were authorized by statute to exercise complete dominion over the automobile in their custody. In Cady the court upheld a warrantless search of an automobile which had been disabled on the highway as the result of an accident. The automobile had been operated by a Chicago policeman who beeame unconscious following the accident. After the car had been lawfully removed from the highway to a private garage at the direction of the police, a police officer searched the vehicle because he reasonably believed that the car contained a police revolver and was vulnerable to intrusion by vandals. The court said that in weighing the reasonableness of the search, “two factual considerations deserve emphasis. First, the police had exercised a form of custody or control over the . . . [vehicle]. . . . Second, . . . the search of the trunk to retrieve the police revolver was ‘standard procedure in . . . [that police] department,’ to protect the public from the possibility that a revolver would fall into untrained or perhaps malicious hands.” Id., 442-43.
The present case does not fall within the exception established in Cooper and Cady. The defendant’s vehicle was neither impounded nor otherwise within the control or custody of the police. Officer Scott did not enter the vehicle to find evidence of a crime or to protect the public or himself, but merely to protect the defendant’s personal property from the speculative danger of vandalism. And there is *144nothing in the record before us to show that it was “standard procedure” in the Wilton police department to remove property from susceptible vehicles without the owners’ consent.
The remaining question is whether the new exception to the warrant requirement enunciated by the majority is “reasonable” within the meaning of the fourth amendment. That question is not answered by saying that Officer Scott’s intention to protect the defendant’s guitar brought his conduct within the “community caretairing function” of the police articulated in Cady2 The Supreme Court did not suggest in Cady that any search engaged in by a policeman as part of his community caretairing duties automatically complies with the standards of the fourth amendment. “There is no formula for the determination of reasonableness. Each case is to be decided on its own facts and circumstances.” Go-Bart Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 357, 51 S. Ct. 153, 75 L. Ed. 374; Cady v. Dombrowski, supra, 440, citing Cooper, supra.
Most previous fourth amendment cases in which warrants have been held unnecessary have required courts to balance the individual’s right to privacy against a genuine and immediate public interest, such as the detection of a crime, the discovery of evidence or contraband, or the protection of the general public or the police. The justification for the invasion of privacy in the present case is far less *145compelling. No interest of the public, nor any emergency,3 motivated. Officer Scott to enter the defendant’s vehicle. There is no evidence that Officer Scott believed the guitar to be of special value. Nor had he assumed personal or official responsibility for the automobile and its contents. The trial court found that he simply intended to protect the defendant’s guitar from the speculative threat of vandalism.
There is of course a general public interest in the protection of private property, but no more so than in the preservation of individual privacy. The record before us does not suggest the existence of a prevailing public expectation that police officers will remove items of value from insecure and unattended automobiles for safekeeping without the consent of the owners. The intrusions on privacy and inconvenience attending such a practice would more likely generate public dismay. Moreover, there was no evidence in the record that Officer Scott’s conduct in this case was standard police procedure.
In my view, the remote risk that an individual may suffer a minor property loss does not justify a police invasion of that individual’s constitutionally protected privacy where the police are not already charged with custodial responsibility4 of the prop*146erty to be safeguarded. Furthermore, by creating such an exception to the warrant requirement, without sharply delineating the circumstances to which it applies, the majority opinion may be inviting additional challenges to police credibility and more courtroom contests over the police officer’s state of mind. I conclude that Officer Scott’s entry and search were not constitutionally “reasonable.” Accordingly, I would reverse the defendant’s conviction and remand the case with direction to grant the motion to suppress.

 In a footnote, at p. 442, the court said: “Petitioner argued before this Court that unlocking the trunk of the Ford did not constitute a 'search' -within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The thesis is that only an intrusion, into an area in which an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with the specific intent of discovering evidence of a crime constitutes a search .... Swt see Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S. Ct. 1727, 18 L. Ed. 2d 930 (1967) .... We need not decide this issue. Petitioner conceded in the Court of Appeals that this intrusion was a search. Inasmuch as we believe that Sarris and other decisions control this case even if the intrusion is characterized as a search, we need not deal with petitioner’s belated contention.” (Emphasis added.)

 In Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441, 93 S. Ct. 2523, 37 L. Ed. 2d 706, the United States Supreme Court said: “Local police officers, unlike federal officers, frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.”

 Cf. Restatement (Second) 1 Torts §§ 197, 263. These sections legitimate entry on land in the possession of another, or trespass to the chattel of another, “if it is or is reasonably believed to be reasonable and necessary to protect the . . . property of the . . . other . . . from serious harm, unless the actor knows that the person for whose benefit he acts is unwilling that he shall do so.” (Quoted from § 263.) As the comment to § 197 emphasizes, the privilege stated in these sections exists only in an emergency.

 I venture no opinion on the constitutional validity of “inventory searches” of vehicles lawfully in police custody. See, e.g., Mozzetti v. Superior Court, 4 Cal. 3d 699, 485 P.2d 84; People v. Sullivan, 29 N.Y.2d 69, 272 N.E.2d 464, and note, 48 A.L.R.3d 537.