Court Opinion

ID: 9552134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 19:05:23.15653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:25:41.106732
License: Public Domain

GORDON, Justice
(dissenting):
Although I agree that probable cause existed for the arrest of appellant, her search can be justified only if done pursuant to a warrant, or as a search incident to a lawful arrest.
In my view, A.R.S. § 13 — 1446(E)(2) (Supp. 1973) (quoted in the majority opinion of this Court) cannot eliminate constitutional standards: “reasonable cause” must mean “probable cause”, and even if probable cause exists to arrest the scope of the search incident to that arrest is limited to the exterior portions of the accused’s body, or that area near enough to him to be within his control, so that weapons may be taken which the accused might use to effect an escape, or evidence taken which might be seized and destroyed by the accused. Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). A search incident to arrest that goes beyond this scope in breadth or intensity without a warrant or other judicial intervention should be closely scrutinized on a case by case basis for constitutional validity.
Under Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966), searches involving intrusions beyond the body’s surface require (1) clear indication the evidence sought will be found, and (2) a warrant. The warrant requirement has been waived, as it was in Schmerber, when exigent circumstances exist. Circumstances are exigent when, for example, evidence which would naturally diminish is sought, such as blood alcohol level.
Although no one has a right to destroy evidence, the facts in this case do not warrant an assumption that appellant’s swallowing of the balloons of heroin would cause this result. Had the facts indicated that the officers were unsure of how the heroin was contained (whether in paper or tin foil as opposed to balloons which if properly tied will not discharge their contents into the digestive system), I would agree with the majority. But here the facts given show that the officers knew from ample experience that heroin which appellant was trying to conceal by swallowing was contained in balloons. Balloons normally would pass through the digestive system with their contents intact, without ill effect.
Under these circumstances, a warrant should have been sought. Such warrant would authorize a search of the interior portion of appellant’s body. Alternatively, appellant could have been given a choice, by judicial order, between the monitoring of her body wastes for a period of a day or two or accepting the imposition of a medically supervised procedure wherein the evidence would be removed from her body by the use of emetics. Applying a choke hold and the accompanying struggle and beating of appellant to force her to cough up the balloons, which process, according to the evidence went from a standing position of the three parties to a lying down position on a couch, and thereafter on the floor, and which lasted between thirty seconds and two minutes, constituted in my opinion an unacceptable alternative to a further more specific warrant or court order.
The alternative I suggest would preserve the expectation of privacy that one should have of the inner portions of his or her body. The body, like the home, cannot be invaded by officers, absent the most compelling circumstances, without a warrant authorizing them to do so. The alternative I suggest would also render unnecessary the agonizing process of reconciling police conduct with the United States’ Supreme Court’s statement that “[i]t would be a stultification of the responsibility which the course of constitutional history has cast upon this Court to hold that in order to *535convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind but can extract what is in his stomach.” Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 at 173, 72 S.Ct. 205 at 210, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952).
Under these particular facts, and not others which are presently not before us, I would exclude the evidence obtained because the conduct of the police violated appellant’s rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution as well as by Art. 2, § 8 of the Constitution of Arizona. See Rochin v. California, supra; People v. Bracamonte, 15 Cal.3d 394, 124 Cal.Rptr. 528, 540 P.2d 624 (1975).
I must, therefore, respectfully dissent.
CAMERON, C. J., concurs.