Court Opinion

ID: 9858574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:30:47.195006+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:52.250895
License: Public Domain

UHLENHOPP, Justice
(dissenting).
In this case the inhabitant of an apartment was temporarily away. The first problem I have is whether, under those circumstances, the apartment was “vacated” or “abandoned,” as the second sentence of section 808.6 requires. Assuming it was vacated or abandoned, the question is whether the police could enter and search the apartment under their warrant in the way that they did.
I visualize three situations. In one situation the police with a warrant come to an apartment, the inhabitant is gone, and the police enter and search. I agree with the majority that police, who are unaware of the whereabouts of an inhabitant, would not be required to look for the inhabitant before entering and searching the apartment under those facts. In a second situation, the police deliberately wait until the inhabitant leaves the apartment and then enter and search it. I think this would constitute an evasion of section 808.6 and be unlawful. In a third situation, some police officers with a warrant go directly to the apartment and enter and search it, and other police officers go to the place the inhabitant is, get her, and take her to the apartment, arriving when the entry and search was complete. In my opinion that is the situation we have here, and it is closer to the second situation than the first one and again constitutes an evasion of the section.
We review these search and seizure cases de novo. State v. Schrier, 283 N.W.2d 338, 341-42 (Iowa 1979). The police had been in communication with the estranged husband of the apartment inhabitant. That the second group of police officers just happened to arrive with the inhabitant at the apartment after the first group had completed the entry and search is too coincidental for me to accept.
I would reverse.