Court Opinion

ID: 9585427
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:00:20.929214+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:44:17.432914
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
(concurring). The court today overturns long-standing precedent and diminishes the people's protection from illegal arrests in their homes.
In Laasch v. State, 84 Wis. 2d 587, 267 N.W.2d 278 (1978), this court held that a warrantless arrest of a person in his or her own home absent exigent circumstances was unlawful and would deprive the trial court of personal jurisdiction over the defendant. In State v. Monje, 109 Wis. 2d 138, 147, 325 N.W.2d 695 ((1982), this court said that the Laasch ruling was justified to protect the special dignities and sanctity of one's home.
Today the court concludes that the warrantless arrest in the home was illegal, majority opinion at page 224, but "withdraws" prior case language that an illegal warrantless arrest in the home deprives the court of personal jurisdiction over the defendant. Majority opinion at page 224. An illegal warrantless arrest in the home now gives a court personal jurisdiction over the defendant.
By basing the court's jurisdiction on an illegal war-rantless arrest of the defendant in his home, the court legitimizes the illegal conduct which produced the arrest. Courts should not be parties to invasions of the constitutional rights of citizens.
*245While I join the court in holding that the warrant-less arrest was illegal and that the conviction must be reversed, I do not join the court in overruling our past cases which say that a court does not have personal jurisdiction of a private citizen who was rendered a defendant in court through an illegal warrantless arrest in the home.
I am authorized to state that CHIEF JUSTICE NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN joins in this concurrence.