Court Opinion

ID: 9787671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:21:41.758562+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:59.318239
License: Public Domain

PICKARD, Chief Judge (specially concurring). {17} I agree with the majority that the trial court’s order suppressing evidence should be affirmed. However, I disagree with the majority’s adoption of a rule that resort to a ruse is per se unreasonable absent exigent circumstances. While adoption of such a rule appears to be supported within the general language of State v. Attaway, 117 N.M. 141, 870 P.2d 103 (1994), the precise issue of whether entry by ruse would be permissible absent exigent circumstances was not raised by the facts of that ease and was accordingly not decided therein. Further, no case of which I am aware has adopted such a rule, and the authorities appear to be to the contrary. See Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure, § 4.8(b) at pp. 604-05 (3rd ed.1996) (indicating that the purposes of the knock and announce requirement are not offended by entry by ruse); State v. Williamson, 42 Wash.App. 208, 710 P.2d 205, 207 (1985) (stating that when entry is gained by ruse, there is neither breaking nor entry without valid permission). {18} I do not believe that we need to decide in this ease whether a blanket ruse exception to the announcement rule is inconsistent with Attaway’s directive that noncompliance with the announcement rule must be justified on a ease-by-case basis by a particularized showing of exigent circumstances. That is because we do not have a simple ruse here. Instead, we have a ruse contemporaneously accompanied by a show of force that seized Reynaga as the raiding officers swept into the trailer. Under these circumstances, in which the ruse was contemporaneously accompanied by an illegal show of force, the State’s attempt to compartmentalize the ruse as something that led to circumstances justifying a later entry by force was properly rejected by the trial court, and the trial court’s suppression of evidence was well within the holdings of both our own existing eases and the out-of-state cases cited by the majority. See State v. Chavez, 87 N.M. 180, 531 P.2d 603 (Ct.App.1975) (holding that entry by ruse is not illegal if force is not an element of the entry); Commonwealth v. Ceriani, 411 Pa.Super. 96, 600 A.2d 1282 (1991) (suppressing evidence where entry by ruse was accompanied by force). {19} In light of the foregoing, I specially concur.