Court Opinion

ID: 9516085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:34:10.083359+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:24.213802
License: Public Domain

KARWACKI, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s holding that police officers, possessing probable cause to believe that the appellant had participated in the murder of William Conlee and the armed robbery of Robert H. Massey, could not arrest him without a warrant in the absence of exigent circumstances when the appellant voluntarily opened the door to his apartment in response to their knock. United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 49 L.Ed.2d 300 (1976) should control the disposition of this case rather *471than Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980).
While the Fourth Amendment protects against warrant-less intrusions into the home by the police, the basis for that protection is the individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her home. When an individual voluntarily opens the door in response to a knock, that expectation of privacy is relinquished. Under such circumstances, I would hold that the police may effect a warrantless arrest upon probable cause as is permitted in any public place. United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598 (1976) (holding that a nonexigent warrantless arrest of an individual in a public place upon probable cause does not violate the Fourth Amendment).
In Santana the police had probable cause to believe that “Mom” Santana had in her possession marked money that she had received in a sale of heroin. When the officers went to Santana’s home, they saw her standing in the doorway of the house with a brown paper bag in her hand. After shouting “police” and displaying identification, the officers approached the house, but Santana retreated into the vestibule. The officers followed her through the open door, catching her in the vestibule, whereupon they seized two bundles of heroin that had fallen out of the paper bag and the marked money which had been in Santana’s pockets. In reversing the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which had upheld a district court’s order granting Santana’s motion to suppress that evidence, the Supreme Court concluded that Santana was in a “public” place when she stood in the open doorway of her house:
While it may be true that under the common law of property the threshold of one’s dwelling is “private,” as is the yard surrounding the house, it is nonetheless clear that under the cases interpreting the Fourth Amendment Santana was in a “public” place. She was not in an area where she had any expectation of privacy. “What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own house or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment *472protection.” Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 [88 S.Ct. 507, 511, 19 L.Ed.2d 576] (1967). She was not merely visible to the public but was as exposed to public view, speech, hearing, and touch as if she had been standing completely outside her house. Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 59 [44 S.Ct. 445, 446, 68 L.Ed. 898] (1924). Thus, when the police, who concededly had probable cause to do so so, sought to arrest her, they merely intended to perform a function which we have approved in Watson. (Emphasis supplied.)
427 U.S. at 42, 96 S.Ct. at 2409, 49 L.Ed.2d at 305. Because the arrest of Santana had been set in motion in a public place, the Court held that Santana’s act of retreating into her house did not invalidate the otherwise proper arrest. Id. at 42-43, 96 S.Ct. at 2409-10, 49 L.Ed.2d at 305-06.
In terms of the Supreme Court’s analysis in Santana, the appellant was in a “public” place after he voluntarily opened his door in response to a knock. Appellant certainly knew that he was exposing himself to the “view, speech, hearing, and touch” of whoever was at the door. Since the record does not reflect that he was aware of who was knocking at his door, there is no suggestion that he was intimidated into opening the door by the presence of police officers by anything they said or did. Compare United States v. Al-Azzawy, 784 F.2d 890, 893 (9th Cir.1985), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 106 S.Ct. 2255, 90 L.Ed.2d 700 (1986) (where police surrounded appellee’s trailer with weapons drawn and ordered him through a bullhorn to leave the trailer, arrest occurred inside trailer since appellee “did not voluntarily expose himself to [police officers’] view or control outside his trailer but only emerged under circumstances of extreme coercion”); United States v. Morgan, 743 F.2d 1158 (6th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1061, 105 S.Ct. 2126, 85 L.Ed.2d 490 (1985) (defendant did not voluntarily expose himself to warrantless arrest where police surrounded his mother's home, flooded it with spotlights, and summoned him to the door “with the blaring call of a bullhorn”); Scroggins v. State, 276 Ark. 177, 633 S.W.2d 33, *47335-37 (1982) (arrest just outside motel room held illegal where defendant opened door after police officers knocked and identified themselves, and defendant stepped outside room at officers’ request while they held a gun on him); but see Rodriguez v. State, 653 S.W.2d 305, 307 (Tex.Crim.App.1983) (appellants’ act of opening door to police officer who had knocked on door, shouting “Police Officer,” exhibited “intentional relinquishment of any subjective expectation of privacy”). Furthermore, the appellant does not assert that he was lured into opening the door through some ruse or deception on the part of the police. Compare United States v. Johnson, 626 F.2d 753, 755-57 (9th Cir.1980), aff'd on other grounds, 457 U.S. 537, 102 S.Ct. 2579, 73 L.Ed.2d 202 (1982) (defendant did not voluntarily expose himself to warrantless arrest by opening his door to federal agents who had misrepresented their identities). The mere fact that the police officers obtained the appellant’s presence at the door by knocking on it did not render his act of opening the door involuntary, “there being no right of a citizen, constitutional or otherwise, which immunizes him from having a policeman knock on his door during reasonable evening hours.” Mullaney v. State, 5 Md.App. 248, 257, 246 A.2d 291 (1968), cert. denied, 252 Md. 732 (1969).
The voluntary act of the appellant in the case sub judice in exposing himself to “public view, speech, hearing, and touch” is significant when measured against the factual predicates for the Supreme Court’s decision in Payton v. New York, supra. The Court there was reviewing two warrantless entries into residences. In the first case police officers, possessing probable cause to arrest one Riddick for armed robbery, knocked on the door of Riddick’s home. When Riddick’s young son opened the door, the officers saw Riddick sitting in bed covered by a sheet. They entered the house and placed him under arrest. In the second case police officers, possessing probable cause to arrest one Payton for murder, proceeded to his apartment. When there was no response to their knock at the apartment door, they forcibly broke down the door and entered the apart*474ment. In neither case before the Court in Payton had the arrestee voluntarily opened the door of his residence and exposed himself to “public view, speech, hearing and touch.”
In testing the reasonableness of the seizure of the appellant’s person without a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, the focus should be on his reasonable expectation of privacy at the site of the arrest. When he voluntarily placed himself in the open doorway of his home, he knowingly entered a public place where he was subject to a nonexigent warrantless arrest. United States v. Carrion, 809 F.2d 1120, 1127-28 (5th Cir.1987), United States v. Mason, 661 F.2d 45, 47 (5th Cir.1982); People v. Burns, 200 Colo. 387, 615 P.2d 686, 688-89 (1980); Byrd v. State, 481 So.2d 468, 471-72 (Fla.1985); State v. Howard, 373 N.W.2d 596, 598-99 (Minn.1985); People v. Graves, 135 Ill.App.3d 727, 90 Ill.Dec. 516, 482 N.E.2d 223 (1985); People v. Patton, 122 Ill.App.3d 46, 77 Ill.Dec. 547, 460 N.E.2d 851 (1984); People v. Cox, 121 Ill.App.3d 118, 76 Ill.Dec. 632, 634, 459 N.E.2d 269, 271 (1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 963, 105 S.Ct. 360, 83 L.Ed. 296 (1984); People v. Schreiber, 104 Ill.App.3d 618, 60 Ill.Dec. 417, 421-22, 432 N.E.2d 1316, 1320-21 (1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1214, 103 S.Ct. 1214, 75 L.Ed. 452 (1983).
Judge ROSALYN B. BELL has authorized me to state that she concurs with the views expressed herein.