Court Opinion

ID: 9687214
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:18:59.088398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:24.824063
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(dissenting). A wide variety of situations can produce a telephone call from a citizen to a police department requesting the dispatch of a police ambulance. However, most will fall into one of two categories:
(1) Report of accident. Here the telephone call provides no reasonable basis for believing that a crime has been committed. Example: A homeowner telephones the police to state that his wife has suffered an apparent heart attack and that an ambulance is required to convey her to a hospital. Responding to such call, the police come on a mission of mercy only. They may make observations while serving as stretcher-bearers taking the wife from bed or floor to the ambulance. But that is all. There is neither consent nor reasonable basis for a contemporary search of the premises.
(2) Report of crime. Here the telephone call provides a reasonable basis for believing that a crime has been committed. Example: A homeowner telephones the police to state that his wife has been raped and cruelly beaten and that an ambulance is needed to take her to a hospital. Responding to such telephoned request, the police are given a dual invitation and assignment: (1) To aid the victim; and (2) to investigate for evidence that may lead to the identification and apprehension of the rapist. Both entry and investigation are authorized by direct invitation, express or implied, of the homeowner making the telephone call.
The disagreement on this appeal is in what category the husband’s telephone call is to be placed. The writer, and colleagues joining in this dissent, would place it in the second category, i.e., a report of probable crime *611rather than a report of accident. When he telephoned the police, the husband told them that, when he came home from work, he found the body of his child, cold and lifeless, and his wife, completely unconscious, lying side-by-side on a bed in the bedroom. That either or both had been the victim of foul play was an entirely reasonable conclusion to make, based on the report given. That the husband was reporting the probable commission of a crime is an entirely reasonable summary of the information he furnished to police. So the police dispatched both an ambulance and an investigatory squad to the premises. This was not only proper police procedure; it is exactly what they were invited to do by the report given by the husband who clearly had the right to invite or consent to search.1
When the police arrived at the home of the person making the telephone call, they entered, not only by consent, but at the invitation of the homeowner. They entered, and had the right to enter, for two purposes: (1) To secure hospital attention for the unconscious wife and apparently lifeless child; and (2) to investigate circumstances surrounding the condition of the wife and death of the child. Priority was given to taking the wife and child by ambulance to a hospital. That was entirely appropriate, for the saving of human life is entitled to the highest priority. After the ambulance had left, the police officers returned twice to the bedroom and on the second occasion observed, in plain view on a nightstand at the bedside, the notes to which *612objection is now made. As to objects in plain view, the question is whether the officers had the right to be in the position to have that view.2 We would hold that the officers, by consent and invitation of the homeowner, had the right to stand where they stood when they saw what they saw.
The majority opinion finds the police taking of the notes that were in plain view on the nightstand to be improper. Apparently, the majority views the husband’s telephone call as solely a request for an ambulance, unaccompanied by a report of a situation calling for and requiring police investigation of the circumstances. If no more had been involved than his reporting he had found his wife unconscious on the bed, this interpretation of the telephone call might hold up. But the husband also informed police that alongside the unconscious body of his wife lay the cold and apparently lifeless body of his child. The unconscious wife and dead child, side-by-side on the bed, make accident (such as the wife’s taking too many sleeping pills by mistake or the child’s happening upon a bottle of iodine in a medicine chest) an unlikely explanation of what had happened. The husband’s report to police was a report that a crime had likely been committed. Such report required and authorized police investigation.3
*613The majority opinion rests the police entry in the bedroom, not upon consent or invitation, but upon “exigent-circumstance rule,” 4 meaning required by the circumstances then and there present. The majority agrees with the trial court that the “. . . initial intrusion into Pires’ dwelling was justified under this doctrine.” However, the majority holds the “second intrusion into the Pires’ bedroom” was not justified by the circumstances then exigent. This makes two police visits to the bedroom, separated by minutes, into two separate searches. This we would not do. If the police had a right to check or search the bedroom at all, as we see it, they had a right to recheck it. It is true that in one case this court upheld a contemporaneous search, but found tainted a second search, three days later.5 But that was three days later. Here, if the officers had the right to check the bedroom, we would hold they had the right, some minutes later, to recheck it.
Finding consent and invitation as the basis for the police being in the bedroom, first time or second, we do not reach or need the exigent-circumstance rule. If we did, we would not limit it, as does the majority opinion, to “. . . the compelling need to assist the victim or apprehend those responsible, not the need to secure evidence.” If the crime were rape, the circumstances exigent would not merely justify looking for another rape victim in the bedroom or to see if the rapist was hiding under the bed or in a closet. Criminals may return to the scene of their crimes on occasion, but they *614usually leave promptly after the crime has been completed. The police would have the right and duty to seek telltale clues which are in plain view and have been left behind by the perpetrator of the crime. Apprehension of a criminal is more often accomplished by discovering what he has left behind than by discovering that he has stayed behind.
Of course, as the majority opinion points out, search, lawful in its inception, may become unlawful if its scope or intensity are broadened.6 We see neither scope nor intensity broadened by stepping back into a bedroom to check or recheck it. Nor would we attach to the departure of the ambulance the importance given it in the majority opinion. If the husband, as we would hold, reported the probable commission of a crime in his home, the coming or going of the ambulance does not affect the consent given to the police to investigate circumstances surrounding the situation reported.
We would not consider important, or even relevant, the conclusion that the police, before entering the bedroom again, “. . . knew the baby and its mother were at the hospital.” If this fact is at all controlling, the suggestion is that police officers complete their investigation before the ambulance leaves. Minutes are precious when it comes to saving lives. Police officers are entitled, and, as we see it, required to give priority to getting those in need of medical attention to the hospital. Having accomplished that task, they may resume their search.
It may well be, in light of the majority holding, that, upon receipt of a telephoned request from a homeowner for the dispatch of an ambulance to his home, reporting a situation that makes it reasonable to believe that a crime has been committed, the police are now required *615to ask, “Are you requesting that we investigate what has happened ?” Given the predictable affirmative response, the invitation to enter and investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident would be express, not implied. We see no reason for requesting an express authorization where, as in the case before us, consent to investigate can be reasonably implied from the husband’s report to the police. We would reverse the trial court’s order which held inadmissible the notes observed and taken from the bedstand by the police, and we would find the police procedure followed in this case absolutely appropriate and completely correct.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Bruce F. Beilfuss and Mr. Justice Leo B. Hanley join in this dissent.

 Embry v. State (1970), 46 Wis. 2d 151, 174 N. W. 2d 521, holding where two persons have equal rights to use of premises either may give consent to search and evidence discovered can be used against either. See also: Mears v. State (1971), 52 Wis. 2d 435, 190 N. W. 2d 184. In addition, see: State ex rel. Van Ermen v. Burke (1966), 30 Wis. 2d 324, 140 N. W. 2d 737, authorities not required to inform accused of right to refuse to consent to search.

 “It is established law that ‘. . . objects falling in the plain view of an officer who has a right to be in the position to have that view are subject to seizure and may be introduced in evidence.’ ” State v. Davidson (1969), 44 Wis. 2d 177, 195, 170 N. W. 2d 755, quoting Harris v. United States (1968), 390 U. S. 234, 236, 88 Sup. Ct. 992, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1067. See also: Milburn v. State (1971), 50 Wis. 2d 53, 58, 183 N. W. 2d 70, upholding seizure of evidence from automobile because . . officers had the right to be in the position from which they viewed the objects within the car. . . .”

 The majority opinion notes that, before telephoning the police, the husband first called the wife’s psychiatrist and then his brother. This might suggest that he suspected that his wife had *613committed the crime of taking the life of the child, but would not negative the likelihood a crime had been committed.

 “ . . that the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative.’” Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971), 403 U. S. 443, 455, 91 Sup. Ct. 2022, 29 L. Ed. 2d 564, quoting McDonald v. United States (1948), 335 U. S. 451, 456, 69 Sup. Ct. 191, 93 L. Ed. 153.

 State v. Davidson, supra, at pages 194, 195.

 Citing Terry v. Ohio (1968), 392 U. S. 1, 88 Sup. Ct. 1868, 20 L. Ed. 2d 889; United States v. Small (D. C. Mass. 1969), 297 Fed. Supp. 582.