Court Opinion

ID: 9526875
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:25:28.234292+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:16.100518
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I am concerned that the majority’s broad approval of sweep searches jeopardizes well-established Fourth Amendment guarantees.
Here, three police officers responded to a rape report describing a single assailant and arrested defendant as he opened his apartment door. The defendant was placed against the wall and closely guarded by one officer. The other officers swept through the rest of the apartment, looking for another person overheard by the cabdriver as a male or female “young voice.” As a consequence of this “protective search,” the police seized a pair of pantyhose found in a bedroom closet, two nail files found lying atop a bedroom television set, a pair of blue knit gloves found on the kitchen refrigerator, and a leather coat hanging in the closed entryway closet.
The “most basic constitutional rule” in this area is that warrantless searches are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, and the results of the search thereby inadmissible, unless the state can come within one of “a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.” Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 454, 91 S.Ct. 2022, 2032, 29 L.Ed.2d 564, 576 (1971); Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 357, 88 S.Ct. 507, 514, 19 L.Ed.2d 576, 585 (1967). Upon examination of the circumstances of the instant case, I am not persuaded that the search was within permissible constitutional limits. Accordingly, I would suppress the seized evidence and reverse the conviction.
The permissible constitutional limits of a warrantless search incident to an arrest were clearly defined in Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). There, the Supreme Court invalidated the search of a burglary suspect’s residence immediately following his arrest there by three police officers. The court reviewed prior decisions on the scope of a *359search incident to the arrest, remarking that attempts to evaluate such searches under a vague standard of “reasonableness” were “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 unconfined analysis, Fourth Amendment protection in this area would approach the evaporation point.” 395 U.S. 764, 89 S.Ct. 2041, 23 L.Ed.2d 695. The court held:
“When an. arrest is made, it is reasonable for the arresting officer to search the person arrested in order to remove any weapons that the latter might seek to use in order to resist arrest or effect his escape. Otherwise, the officer’s safety might well be endangered, and the arrest itself frustrated. In addition, it is entirely reasonable for the arresting officer to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee’s person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction. And the area into which an arrestee might reach in order to grab a weapon or evidentiary items must, of course, be governed by a like rule. A gun on a table or in a drawer in front of one who is arrested can be as dangerous to the arresting officer as one concealed in the clothing of the person arrested. There is ample justification, therefore, for a search of the ar-restee’s person and the area ‘within his immediate control’ construing that phrase to mean the area from within which he might gain possession of a weapon or destructible evidence.
“There is no comparable justification, however, for routinely searching any room other than that in which an arrest occurs — or, for that matter, for searching through all the desk drawers or other closed or concealed areas in that room itself. Such searches, in the absence of well-recognized exceptions, may be made only under the authority of a search warrant.” 395 U.S. 751, 89 S.Ct. 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 694.
The rule of Chimel, applicable in state court proceedings via Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081 (1961), has heretofore been carefully applied in the decisions of this court. See, e. g., State v. Cox, 294 Minn. 252, 200 N.W.2d 305 (1972). See, also, State v. Mitchell, 285 Minn. 153, 172 N.W.2d 66 (1969) (invalidating a pre-Chimel search of an entire residence incident to an arrest.)1
Nor do I find sufficient “exigent circumstances” to permit the additional warrant-less search conducted here. This was not a hostage situation, State v. Smith, 261 N.W.2d 349 (Minn.1977), nor was there an additional, unlocated accomplice who had been implicated in the original crime. See, State v. Mollberg, 246 N.W.2d 463 (Minn.1976). The possible presence of a non-suspect third party in the apartment is in itself insufficient to justify such a search. Both Chimel, supra and Mitchell, supra, noted that such a third party was present at the time of the arrest and would be left within the premises when the suspect was taken into custody. The state’s argument that a search is necessary to protect evidence from possible destruction by a third party friendly to defendant asks too much:
*360“An adoption of the government’s reasoning would result in the evaporation of an arrestee’s Fourth Amendment rights. There is almost always a partisan who might destroy or conceal evidence. Under the government’s theory, if a man were arrested in New York, it would be perfectly reasonable to search his home in California to prevent his wife’s destruction of evidence. Using the same reasoning, the police could return to the scene of arrest, be it home or office, and conduct a search at any time following an arrest. The government’s reasoning provides no logical temporal or spatial limitations to the theory of search incident to lawful arrest. We must either reject the government’s view or adopt the idea that a person’s Fourth Amendment rights cease at the time of arrest. We prefer the former. We conclude therefore that the ability of a third party to destroy evidence does not temporally expand the authority of arresting officers to conduct a search incident to a lawful arrest.” United States v. Davis, 423 F.2d 974, 979 (5 Cir. 1970); See also, United States v. Erwin, 507 F.2d 937 (5 Cir. 1975).
Nor has the state demonstrated any reasonable fear that this male or female “young voice,” belonging to an unknown, unsuspected, and unimplicated third party, presented a perceptible risk to the officer’s security.
Absent the demonstrated applicability of an established exception, the warrantless search was invalid, and its products should have been suppressed.

. The majority’s attempt to distinguish State v. Mitchell, supra, on the basis of the extent of the search, is not persuasive. As the court in Chimel observed:
“It would be possible, of course, to draw a line between [United States v.] Rabinowitz, [339 U.S. 56, 70 S.Ct. 430, 94 L.Ed. 653 (1950)] and Harris [v. United States, 331 U.S. 145, 67 S.Ct. 1098, 91 L.Ed. 1399 (1947)] on the one hand, and this case on the other. For Rabinowtiz involved a single room, and Harris a four-room apartment, while in the case before us an entire house was searched. But such a distinction would be highly artificial.
The rationale that allowed the searches and seizures in Rabinowitz and Harris would allow the searches and seizures in this case. No consideration relevant to the Fourth Amendment suggests any point of rational limitation, once the search is allowed to go beyond the area from which the person arrested might obtain weapons or evidentiary items. The only reasoned distinction is one between a search of the person arrested and the area within his reach on the one hand, and more extensive searches on the other.” 395 U.S. 766, 89 S.Ct. 2041, 23 L.Ed.2d 685.