Court Opinion

ID: 9662474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:10:30.386681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:26:45.469173
License: Public Domain

Heffernan, J.
(dissenting). The majority opinion vindicates an unconstitutional intrusion upon private *529premises. In this case, the two police officers came to arrest John Rice, a probation violator. According to the record, they came armed with no information whatsoever but the name of the person they sought and the belief, the source of which is unknown, that he was to be found in the residence of the defendant, Norma Jane Glims.
Putting aside for the moment the question of the scope of authority given to a police officer who seeks to execute an administrative warrant for the arrest of a probation violator, it appears from the record that there was no prior evidence of probable cause to enter the Gums home. However, the police officers, when they arrived at the residence, stated their identity and asked if John Rice was there. They eventually received the response that he was and that he was upstairs. They were asked to wait a minute. At this point, the officers had probable cause to believe that John Rice was inside. Had Rice come to the door forthwith, stepped out, and stated he was John Rice, the officers’ mission would have been at an end and there would have been no occasion to cross the threshold of the Gums household. The limited purpose for which they came would have been accomplished. They were duty bound to make the arrest under the administrative warrant and leave the premises forthwith. Officer Abraham, however, stated to the babysitter in charge of the home that either Rice should come out or he would kick the door down. The police officers were told, “We are waiting for him to come down,” and that the door was unlocked.
When Officer Abraham came through the door, he immediately started up the stairway, and a male person started down the stairway. Abraham asked the man if he was John Rice. That person acknowledged that he was. At that point, the function of the police officers was at an end. They had come for the purpose of seizing John *530Eice, and they had done so. It was their duty to leave the premises immediately.
Eice, however, did not have any identification, and thereafter the police officers persisted in attempting to identify Eice by something other than his own admission. In so doing, they intruded, without authorization and without any probable cause whatsoever, upon private premises. The police officers herded the occupants of the house into the kitchen on the ground that it was too congested in the hallway. The congestion would have been reduced by three had the two police officers promptly left with Eice in their custody. There was no authority for the officers to tell the other occupants of the house to move to the kitchen or to follow them there. The officers make the lame excuse that it was necessary to call the police headquarters to get additional information so they could identify Eice.
While in the kitchen, one of the officers saw, on the top of a refrigerator, a substance later determined to be hashish. No doubt, the hashish was in the plain view of the officer who saw it, but he had no right to be in that portion of the premises.
The majority opinion states that the exclusionary rule is not for the purpose of repairing a police intrusion, but is rather for the purpose of imposing a sanction upon officers of the state to deter future unlawful police conduct “and thereby effectuate the guarantee of the Fourth Amendment.”
The conduct here was unlawful, and future conduct of the same type should be deterred because it is unreasonable. When full information is available, it is unreasonable for police officers, having only knowledge of the person’s name, to attempt to make an arrest of a wanted person. Because the police were not adequately prepared to make the arrest, because they had not undertaken the elementary step of securing an avail*531able description of the wanted person, they went to the home of Norma Gums and there intruded upon her premises, made an unlawful search, and without cause curtailed the liberty of other persons on the premises. There was no probable cause to believe any person on the premises other than the man who so identified himself was John Rice. That is the kind of conduct that the fourth amendment seeks to deter. Any reasonable police officer should know when he sets out to make an arrest that he ought to have facts which will enable him to identify the suspect. These facts were readily available at police headquarters and were ascertained by one telephone call.
The state argued that it was necessary, despite Rice’s admission of his identity, to further ascertain that he was the person wanted, because of the possibility of false arrest charges. It is indeed farfetched to believe that any possible civil action would lie when the person arrested told the police that he was the wanted fugitive. The argument that the police officers were protecting themselves against a possible action for false arrest is specious. While the police officers have the right to identify a person before they take him into custody — and in all cases should do so — this information was at their disposal before they set out to make the arrest.
The majority opinion justifies incompetent and unprofessional police work, which occasioned an unconstitutional intrusion into the home of a person not sought on the warrant. Moreover, after the hashish was seen in the kitchen, one of the officers wandered into the living room, apparently to chat with a person he knew, and there discovered another plastic bag containing contraband. No justification for this intrusion is even attempted. It is apparently the position of the majority that, once an appropriate initial entry has been made, the entire home is subject to a roving inspection.
*532The police officers in this case had no prior justification to be in the kitchen or in the living' room. The trial judge properly suppressed the fruits of this unlawful intrusion into a citizen’s home.
It should be mentioned that, in the final analysis, the majority opinion justifies the initial entry on the ground that the officers were told by the baby-sitter that John Rice was present. We do not disagree with the conclusion that probable cause for a limited entry was established at that point. However, since the majority buttresses their finding of probable cause on this information obtained at the scene, it is clear that their discussion of the authority given under an administrative order to pick up a probationer is mere dicta. I do not believe that a probation warrant gives the same power to one executing it as does a constitutional warrant for arrest. The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution provides in part:
“. . . no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things tobe seized.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Under that constitutional mandate, arrest warrants must be issued by neutral and detached magistrates. United States v. United States District Court (1972), 407 U. S. 297, 316, 92 Sup. Ct. 2125, 32 L. Ed. 2d 752; Coolidge v. New Hampshire (1971), 403 U. S. 443, 449, 91 Sup. Ct. 2022, 29 L. Ed. 2d 564; and State ex rel. White v. Simpson (1965), 28 Wis. 2d 590, 598, 137 N. W. 2d 391. Under these cases, it has been held that an executive officer of the government — in Coolidge, the attorney general, and in United States v. United States District Court, the president — were not neutral and detached magistrates, who could issue a warrant. In United States v. United States District Court, page 317, the United States Supreme Court said:
*533“The Fourth Amendment contemplates a prior judicial judgment, not the risk that executive discretion may be reasonably exercised. This judicial role accords with our basic constitutional doctrine that individual freedoms will best be preserved through a separation of powers and division of functions among the different branches and levels of Government.”
Accordingly, the probation violation warrant issued by the administrator of the state division of corrections was not a constitutional warrant, and an officer executing such warrant had only the authority to bring the person before the correction authorities. Officers are not clothed with the broad scope of power that is vested in a police officer when there has been a judicial predetermination of probable cause to arrest.
Since the ultimate authority to make the entry was on the basis of the information received on the scene, the scope of the power of an officer executing an administrative warrant is not an issue in this case. We merely point out that the question of what powers are given to a police officer who serves an administrative pickup warrant is not to be disposed of conclusively by the majority’s summary dicta — particularly in a case where the probable cause for the entry was made upon information not furnished by the complaint or warrant.
The majority has approved of incompetent and unprofessional police practices. It is such ill-advised and unplanned police forays into the privacy of others that Tucker, relied upon by the majority, seeks to deter. The majority opinion takes the position that a police officer, armed with ignorance, can rummage through a home and look through its rooms to secure the information which he should have had before any attempt was made to execute the warrant. In this case, it was not merely a matter of “what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you,” but what the police officers did not know, in the majority’s view, apparently gave them leave to conduct an examina*534tion of the premises which they would not have had the right to do if they had complied with the fourth amendment standard that requires a person subject to arrest to be described “particularly.”
The trial judge properly suppressed the evidence. I would affirm.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Chief Justice Wilkie and Mr. Justice Day join in this dissent.