Court Opinion

ID: 9723549
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:19:37.787844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:49.620538
License: Public Domain

MEYER, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I agree with the majority that the search of appellant’s storage unit does not satisfy the apparent authority exception to the warrant requirement, nor does the plain view exception validate the search. I disagree with the majority’s decision to remand to the district court to allow the state to develop a new record in support of a possible “inevitable discovery” exception to the warrant requirement. I disagree because our remand amounts to giving the state a post-hoc rationalization that is not supported in the existing record and that can never be legitimately developed on remand.
The majority opinion relies on Nix v. Williams for the general proposition that illegally seized evidence may be admissible if the state can establish by a preponderance of the evidence that the fruits of a challenged search “ultimately or inevitably would have been discovered by lawful means.” 467 U.S. 431, 444, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984). In Nix, the Court examined whether evidence regarding the victim’s location and the condition of her body could be admitted under the doctrine of inevitable discovery when the police learned of the body’s location in violation of the suspect’s right to counsel. Id. at 434, 104 S.Ct. 2501.
Robert Williams, the defendant in Nix, was a suspect in the disappearance of 10-*260year-old Pamela Powers, who had been last seen on Christmas Eve at a YMCA in Des Moines, Iowa. Id. at 434, 104 S.Ct. 2501. An eyewitness had placed Williams at the scene of the disappearance, and the day after the girl disappeared several items of her clothing and Williams’ clothing were discovered at a rest stop on Interstate 80 in rural Iowa. Id. at 434-35, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Based on the evidence at hand, police began searching for the missing girl along the interstate where the clothing was found. Two hundred volunteers involved in the search were directed to “check all roads, abandoned farm buildings, ditches, culverts, and any other” such hiding spots. Id. at 435, 104 S.Ct. 2501. The search commenced at 10 a.m. and was called off at 3 p.m. when Williams directed police to the body located in a ditch beside a gravel road, essentially within the area to be searched. Id. at 436, 449, 104 S.Ct. 2501.
On appeal, Williams’ incriminating statements about the body’s location were held to be inadmissible because the statements were obtained in violation of his right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment and the case was remanded for a new trial. Id. at 437, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Nevertheless, the Court held that the evidence of the body and post-mortem tests were properly admitted in the second trial because the evidence inevitably would have been discovered by a search for the victim that was already being pursued. Id. at 449-50, 104 S.Ct. 2501. To limit the speculative application of the inevitable discovery doctrine, the Court required that the proof of inevitable discovery “involves no speculative elements but focuses on demonstrated historical facts capable of ready verification or impeachment.” Id. at 444-45 n. 5, 104 S.Ct. 2501.
In Nix the investigation already underway was focused and vigorous. First, Williams was already in custody as a suspect in the girl’s disappearance so there was no risk the evidence of the body would disappear. Id. at 435, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Second, the search for the girl was well underway and staffed by two hundred volunteers. Id. Third, the body was found within the area to be searched and near a culvert, which was precisely the kind of place the volunteers had been directed to search. Id. at 448-49, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Fourth, there was testimony that had the search continued it would have taken a short period of time, perhaps an additional three to five hours, to discover the body. Id. at 449, 104 S.Ct. 2501. Under these facts, the Court was satisfied that the application of the inevitable discovery doctrine involved no speculative elements and was based on historically verifiable facts. Id. at 449-50,104 S.Ct. 2501.
Unlike the focused and vigorous investigation in play in Nix, the missing person search for Nancy Licari was generalized and routine. The police received the missing person report on April 24, issued a Minnesota Crime Alert notice within two days, and obtained Nancy Licari’s credit card information. Officer Ammend testified there was absolutely no sense of urgency or exigency about the missing person matter before the body was discovered. The state in its brief characterizes the police search of the storage locker as “just looking for some missing persons, ‘doing kind of a courtesy [sic] search for the family basically’ and not investigating a crime.” The police investigators testified at the omnibus hearing that before the body was found the police were not about to arrest Craig Licari and did not consider him a suspect in Nancy Licari’s disappearance. The police were merely searching for anyone who had used the credit cards or had seen Nancy or Craig Licari.
It was only after the body was discovered that the police learned that two of Nancy Licari’s credit cards had been used *261in the Twin Cities area at a motel, a gas station, and a Target store. Only after the body was discovered did local police make contact with the Minneapolis Homicide Division, and with its help an investigation was begun in Minneapolis focused on Li-cari as a suspect. From that point on the entire police investigation was tainted by the knowledge that Nancy Licari had been killed and her body found in a storage locker owned by Craig Licari. Only after the body was discovered did the investigation become focused and vigorous, and eventually lead the police to Licari.
What are the historically verifiable facts in the instant investigation? Nancy Licari was missing for several days. The police were not focused on Craig Licari as a suspect in Nancy Licari’s disappearance. Craig Licari was not in custody and thus was free to move the body. And the police were treating the matter as nothing more than a routine missing person investigation. There is no historically verifiable way to establish that the Isanti police officers would have succeeded in enlisting the assistance of the Minneapolis Police Department in a routine missing person investigation; that the police would have arrested Licari by April 28, wearing his bloody clothes, with the storage locker key in his pocket; or that Craig Licari would not have moved the body before the police reached him. It was the urgency of the homicide investigation that led the police to Licari, and any offer by the state of proof of independent discovery is mere speculation on what may have happened if they had not found the body. The proof is so tainted by police error that the inevitable discovery doctrine should not be applied.
I respectfully dissent.