Court Opinion

ID: 9516218
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:38:05.591487+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:21.728958
License: Public Domain

CERCONE, President Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent.
Although I agree in general with the majority’s restatement of the law applicable to the execution of search warrants, I cannot agree that the facts of this case show an attempt by the police to skirt the knock and announce rule. The majority holds that the evidence in this case may be suppressed because it was tainted by the illegal method by which the officers executed the search warrant. This goes too far. The majority believes that the police created the exigent circumstance to enable them to enter the house forcibly and seize the evidence before Beard or Jones had a chance to destroy it. By the same reasoning, in almost every instance involving the potential destruction of evidence, and the police effort to prevent destruction, the police will have created such an exigency requiring the fruits of the search to be suppressed. The officers need not have executed the search warrant immediately upon its issuance, that is, there was no constitutional infirmity created by *591waiting for Jones’ imminent arrival, nor in anticipating the possibility of Jones’ flight into the house to destroy the evidence. The exigency in this case was not created by the police any more than it is in any other case involving the destruction of evidence.
I would reverse the finding of the suppression court.