Court Opinion

ID: 9676330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:22:02.290371+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:47.709189
License: Public Domain

LEVINE, Justice,
concurring specially.
I write to emphasize the limited nature of the emergency exception and the need for its careful, narrow application.
The emergency exception, with the guidelines we have adopted from People v. Mitchell, 39 N.Y.2d 173, 383 N.Y.S.2d 246, 347 N.E.2d 607 (Ct.App.1976), must be strictly construed to keep the intrusion as limited as possible, so that law enforcement officers are not permitted to invoke the doctrine capriciously to circumvent the warrant requirements to seize evidence they anticipate discovering. Mascólo, The *534Emergency Doctrine Exception to the Warrant Requirement Under the Fourth Amendment, 22 Buffalo L.Rev. 419, 428 (1973). The intrusion may not be a subterfuge for searching for evidence of a crime.
After the emergency has ended, so too does the right to search without a warrant. See United States v. Mincey, 437 U.S. 385, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) [law officers may not engage in investigative search without warrant after emergency has ended]. I am satisfied that Lubenow’s apparent physical distress justified the officer’s entry in the first instance to offer assistance and that the officer was then in a place he was authorized to be when he observed, in plain view, the signs of Lube-now’s intoxication. Cf. Wibben v. North Dakota State Highway Commissioner, 413 N.W.2d 329 (N.D.1987). In my view there was probable cause to arrest at that time. Therefore, our approval of the emergency exception in this case does not diminish the protections of the fourth amendment.