Court Opinion

ID: 9750794
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 15:32:50.10169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:22.131465
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent and in support thereof quote from Judge Hugh R. Jones of the New York Court of Appeals (that state’s highest court) in his majority opinion in People v. Payton, 45 N.Y.2d 300, 309-312, 408 N.Y.S.2d 395, 399, 380 N.E.2d 224, 228-230 (1978):
The parties also draw the conflicting inferences (which others have similarly drawn) from holdings and writings of the Supreme Court of the United States and its individual Justices. Defendants infer from United States v. *303Watson, 423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598, that an arrest following a warrantless entry in the home is invalid; the People conclude from Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d 726, that the contrary is the case. The fact is that the Supreme Court has not yet resolved the issue, as appears from the explicit statement in the plurality opinion in Watson that the question “whether and under what circumstances an officer may enter a suspect’s home to make a warrantless arrest” is “still unsettled” (423 U.S., at p. 418, n. 6, 96 S.Ct. 820, at p. 825). Nor has the issue been resolved in our court. In determining now that the warrantless arrests effected in these cases did not violate defendants’ constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, we rely both on what we perceive to be a substantial difference between the intrusion which attends an entry for the purpose of searching the premises and that which results from an entry for the purpose of making an arrest, and on the significant difference in the governmental interest in achieving the objective of the intrusion in the two instances.
In the case of the search, unless appropriately limited by the terms of a warrant, the incursion on the householder’s domain normally will be both more extensive and more intensive and the resulting invasion of his privacy of greater magnitude than what might be expected to occur on an entry made for the purpose of effecting his arrest. A search by its nature contemplates a possibly thorough rummaging through possessions, with concurrent upheaval of the owner’s chosen or random placement of goods and articles and disclosure to the searchers of a myriad of personal items and details which he would expect to be free from scrutiny by uninvited eyes. The householder by the entry and search of his residence is stripped bare, in greater or lesser degree, of the privacy which normally surrounds him in his daily living, and, if he should be absent, to an extent of which he will be unaware.
*304Entry for the purpose of arrest may be expected to be quite different. While the taking into custody of the person of the householder is unquestionably of grave import, there is no accompanying prying into the area of expected privacy attending his possessions and affairs. That personal seizure alone does not require a warrant was established by United States v. Watson (423 U.S. 411, 96 S.Ct. 820, 46 L.Ed.2d 598, supra), which upheld a warrantless arrest made in a public place. In view of the minimal intrusion on the elements of privacy of the home which results from entry on the premises for making an arrest (as compared with the gross intrusion which attends the arrest itself), we perceive no sufficient reason for distinguishing between an arrest in a public place and an arrest in a residence. To the extent that an arrest will always be distasteful or offensive, there is little reason to assume that arrest within the home is any more so than arrest in a public place; on the contrary, it may well be that because of the added exposure the latter may be more objectionable.
At least as important, and perhaps even more so, in concluding that entries to make arrests are not “unreasonable” — the substantive test under the constitutional proscriptions — is the objective for which they are made, viz., the arrest of one reasonably believed to have committed a felony, with resultant protection to the community. The “reasonableness” of any governmental intrusion is to be judged from two perspectives — that of the defendant, considering the degree and scope of the invasion of his person or property; that of the People, weighing the objective and imperative of governmental action. The community’s interest in the apprehension of criminal suspects is of a higher order than is its concern for the recovery of contraband or evidence; normally the hazards created by the failure to apprehend far exceed the risks which may follow nonrecovery.
. The American Law Institute’s Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure makes similar provision in *305section 120.6, with suggested special restrictions only as to nighttime entries. The accompanying commentary states: “To go further and require a warrant or a showing of necessity before police may make a felony arrest on private property even in daytime seems unduly restrictive. Moreover, apart from the specially alarming quality of nighttime entries and apart from search considerations, it is far from clear that an arrest in one’s home is so much more threatening or humiliating than a street arrest as to justify further restrictions on the police.” (American Law Institute, Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure [1975], p. 307).