Court Opinion

ID: 9585350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:59:33.421702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:39:03.614018
License: Public Domain

Judge SCHWARTZMAN,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I begin where I shall also end:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated____
U.S. Const, amend. IV and Idaho Const, art. I, § 17.
The proliferation of dangerous drugs in our society is nothing short of a scourge. For want of a better teim, I shall euphemistically refer to this curse as the “crankster syndrome.” The crankster syndrome has spawned an equal but opposite counteraction by law enforcement agencies to combat this proliferation of drugs and drug abuse. I refer to these police measures as “pro-active” police investigation techniques designed to ferret out drugs in our society. On the whole, courts in general, and in particular Idaho Courts, have supported pro-active law enforcement in this area, from the constitutional point of view, within various tolerances. As a result, pro-active police investigations capitalize on such constitutional tools as consent to search, stop and frisk, in plain view, touch, feel and/or smell, car search incident to an arrest, as well as the protective sweep, to locate and seize illegal drugs in the absence of a search or arrest warrant. There is nothing per se wrong with this! This phenomenon was elegantly expressed by another court and quoted by me in the recent case of State v. Harwood, 133 Idaho 50, 981 P.2d 1160 (Ct.App.1999), which I summarize as follows:
*558There is no right to escape detection. There is no right to commit a perfect crime or to an equal opportunity to that end. The Constitution is not at all offended when a guilty man stubs his toe. On the contrary it is decent to hope that he will. Nor is it dirty business to use evidence a defendant himself may unwittingly furnish in the detectional stage. It is consonant with good morals and the Constitution to exploit a criminal’s ignorance or stupidity in the detectional process.
Accordingly, I concur with that portion of the opinion which upholds the late-night “consent” entry into the home/apartment and the initial frisk of Fleenor for potential weapons while the police were on the premises in search of an individual who was not there.
But here I draw the line. There are deeper countervailing constitutional resonances to this ease that transcend some shabby little crankster about to get caught for having a small amount of crank encased in a tiny plastic case in his pocket. It is 11:00 p.m. on the eve before New Year’s eve when a probation officer, accompanied by two police officers, make their unsolicited, unannounced and warrantless visitation. They are in the threshold of Fleenor’s home at or by sufferance of one of the occupants. Fleenor, who has every right to be where he is and to have knives or other weapons lying around in his own premises, is now subjected to the mild indignity of a forced, but legal (constitutional) pat-down frisk in his own home late at night because the police are let in by consent.
Where I draw the constitutional line, and am unwilling to suspend my judicial disbelief, is the retrieval of this so-called “weapon” from Fleenor’s pocket and the removal/unscrewing of the cap of the little plastic container, which at this point is clearly known NOT to be a weapon. The item, to the officer’s feel, is about an inch and a half in length and could possibly be a tiny pocket knife. Some weapon!?!3 Fleenor is surrounded by three burly officers of the law in his own home and has something in his pocket the size of a small nail clipper or cap from a ball point pen. This is clearly no concealed weapon in the statutory sense of a dirk knife, bowie knife, dagger, stiletto, etc. of the Idaho Code § 18-3302D(2) variety. If this is deemed a potential threat to law enforcement, within the above context, then they might as well have carte blanche to pick the suspect’s pockets clean, not to mention every kitchen knife, baseball bat, umbrella, etc. in the entire household and sequester the same until their night visitation is completed.4
I am reminded of words from Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting in United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 68, 70 S.Ct. 430, 445, 94 L.Ed. 653, 661 (1950), which talk of constitutional journeys and the direction you are taking. The safeguards of liberty have often been forged in controversies involving petty criminals. And so, it makes all the difference in the world whether one approaches the Fourth Amendment, or Art. I, § 17, as a provision dealing with a formality, a requirement embossed on a piece of parchment, or whether one recognizes it as a safeguard against recurrence of abuses deeply felt by our constitutional forefathers.
The frisk doctrine was conceived as an exception to the probable eause/warrant requirement and is justified by the strict necessity to protect law enforcement. It is not a shorthand means to invade a person’s privacy and indiscriminately rummage around for proof of other crimes.
But what is the necessity here?5 An inch and one-half cylindrical object in a person’s pocket — where that person is in his own home at 11:00 p.m. at night, who is not the subject of a criminal investigation, who is minding his own business, and who is confronted by three officers who are there by *559sufferance without a warrant — is not the stuff of constitutional necessity to remove and seize, much less unscrew6 the little cap of, this innocuous object.
In the context of investigations where citizens are being frisked merely because they are in close quarters with the police, if every fear becomes reasonable because anything is possible, necessity becomes a threshold without any floor or ceiling. If such be the stuff of necessity, I fear it dilutes the historical fabric of our Fourth Amendment, and relegates everything in a person’s pocket — if not his home — to the prying hand and eye.
I do not regret that another hapless crankster is brought before the bar of the criminal justice system and placed on felony probation. I do regret, however, that it comes at the expense of the Fourth Amendment, which is ever so slightly distorted and diminished in the process. It is a small case, but there are those who care. A little judicious skepticism at the trial court level - i.e. a reluctance to simply suspend one’s disbelief - would provide a healthy judicial antidote to this type of petty constitutional infringement. Lest we forget,
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated____
U.S. Const, amend. IV and Idaho Const, art. I, § 17.

. See generally W.R. LaFave, Search and Seizure, Vol. 4, § 9.5(c), 1996; see also State v. Barney, 708 So.2d 1205 (La.App.1998); State v. Abrams, 322 S.C. 286, 471 S.E.2d 716 (App.1996); compare Dobson v. State, 737 So.2d 590, 1999 WL 436810 (Fla.App.1999); State v. Sleep, 590 N.W.2d 235 (S.D.1999).

. Even the trial judge drew the constitutional line at the subsequent protective sweep throughout the remainder of the household.

. I am reminded of words by William Pitt, the Younger, to Parliament (1783):
Necessity is the plea for every infringement, however minor, of [constitutional] freedoms.

. Consider the case of "Reimer’s cup,” State v. Reimer, 127 Idaho 214, 899 P.2d 427 (1995). Here, Officer Doney would, of necessity, have to unscrew the cap to confirm his suspicions.