Court Opinion

ID: 9673532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:14:13.731081+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:22.541392
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
I believe it is clear from the district court’s ruling on defendant’s motion to suppress that the court was aware that defendant was lodg*329ing a Fourth Amendment challenge to the entry of his residence via an administrative search warrant as well as a due process challenge to the procedure under which that warrant was issued. This awareness is evidenced by the court’s statement that:
The Defendant contends that this [the request for a jeopardy assessment and a distress warrant] was a subterfuge and the officers used this as a means of obtaining what amounted to a warrantless search of the premises of a former drug user in the hope that they can find incriminating evidence.
The issue that is described by this language is clearly a Fourth Amendment issue and not a due process issue. This conclusion is inescapable because the court’s remark was in response to a motion that specifically raised Fourth Amendment challenges to the procedure under which his home was entered and cited Fourth Amendment authority in support of those challenges.
It may not be fairly contended that the court did not consider the Fourth Amendment claim so as to defeat error preservation under the standard of State v. Manna, 534 N.W.2d 642, 644 (Iowa 1995). It considered the Fourth Amendment claim but found that the Fourth Amendment issue must necessarily fail if there was no due process violation in the administrative search warrant procedure. I submit that this conclusion was simply incorrect.
Even if defendant’s due process challenge may fail on the issue of the State’s right to a jeopardy assessment and a seizure of assets to satisfy defendant’s tax liabilities, this does not provide a constitutional basis for the entry of defendant’s residence under circumstances that offend against basic Fourth Amendment protections. In making this point to the district court, the defendant cited the ease of People v. Gastelo, 67 Cal.2d 586, 63 Cal.Rptr. 10, 432 P.2d 706 (1967). In that case, the California court recognized that
under the 4th Amendment a specific showing must always be made to justify any kind of police action tending to disturb the security of the people in their homes. Unannounced, forcible entry is in itself a serious disturbance of that security and cannot be justified on a blanket basis. Otherwise the constitutional test of reasonableness would turn only on practical expediency, and the amendment’s primary safeguard, the requirement of particularity, would be lost.
Id. 63 Cal.Rptr. at 12, 432 P.2d at 708. I submit that in the present case the blanket issuance of an administrative search warrant authorizing entry of a personal residence without any articulation of facts rendering the entry reasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes cannot be sustained. All evidence recovered as the fruits of that improper entry should have been suppressed. The defendant’s conviction should be reversed.
NEUMAN and SNELL, JJ., join this dissent.