- LANGE, 594 US ___, 141 SC 2011, ___ LE2 ___ (21) #20-18:
Lange drove by a California highway patrol officer while playing loud music and honking his horn. The officer began to follow Lange and soon after turned on his overhead lights to signal that Lange should pull over. Rather than stopping, Lange drove a short distance to his driveway and entered his attached garage. The officer followed Lange into the garage. He questioned Lange and, after observing signs of intoxication, put him through field sobriety tests. A later blood test showed that Lange’s blood-alcohol content was three times the legal limit.
The State charged Lange with DUI. Lange moved to suppress the evidence obtained after the officer entered his garage, arguing that the warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment. The Superior Court denied Lange’s motion, and its appellate division affirmed. The California Court of Appeal also affirmed. It concluded that Lange’s failure to pull over when the officer flashed his lights created probable cause to arrest Lange for the misdemeanor of failing to comply with a police signal. And it stated that Lange could not defeat an arrest begun in a public place by retreating into his home. The pursuit of a suspected misdemeanant, the court held, is always permissible under the exigent-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. The California Supreme Court denied review.
The Supreme Court, per Kagan, J., holds that under the Fourth Amendment, pursuit of a fleeing misdemeanor suspect does not always—that is, categorically—justify a warrantless entry into a home.
It’s a messy decision.
The Court’s Fourth Amendment precedents thus point toward assessing case by case the exigencies arising from misdemeanants’ flight. When the totality of circumstances shows an emergency—a need to act before it is possible to get a warrant—the police may act without waiting. Those circumstances include the flight itself. But pursuit of a misdemeanant does not trigger a categorical rule allowing a warrantless home entry.
Hello, what? The flight itself is included in the “totality of circumstances,” but there have to be other considerations; and these have to be weighed on the spot as the suspect is fleeing.
See what you can make of this, from Justice Kagan’s opinion:
When the totality of circumstances shows an emergency—such as imminent harm to others, a threat to the officer himself, destruction of evidence, or escape from the home—the police may act without waiting. And those circumstances, as described just above, include the flight itself. But the need to pursue a misdemeanant does not trigger a categorical rule allowing home entry, even absent a law enforcement emergency.
***
On many occasions, the officer will have good reason to enter — to prevent imminent harms of violence, destruction of evidence, or escape from the home. But when the officer has time to get a warrant, he must do so — even though the misdemeanant fled.
Um…okay. In Roberts’ “concurrence” (that reads like a dissent) he calls this approach “hopelessly indeterminate.”
Illegal Detention, But Taint Attenuated by Discovery of Arrest Warrant Before Search
- Kasrawi, 65 CA5 751, ___ CR3 ___ (21) #D077139:
At 4:00 a.m. a San Diego police officer, Pardue, was driving his regular patrol route in Del Mar when he saw Kasrawi cross a residential street and start to enter his Toyota Prius. Because Pardue rarely saw people during his nighttime patrol, knew of two car burglaries in the area in the past week, and did not recognize the Prius, he flipped on his spotlight and pulled up behind and to the side of the Prius, “flooding Kasrawi with a bright light.”
Pardue asked Kasrawi where he was coming from. Kasrawi said he was resting on a drive down from Los Angeles. Pardue didn’t buy it. He had a hunch Kasrawi was “casing vehicles.” He put cuffs on Kasrawi, and subsequently found out Kasrawi had an outstanding arrest warrant.
A subsequent search incident to arrest yielded stolen items from nearby cars in Kasrawi’s pockets and his Prius, from fistfuls of loose change to gift cards and purses. Kasrawi also attempted to discard a bindle of methamphetamine, but an officer who arrived to help Pardue noticed when Kasrawi dropped the small package. Kasrawi was charged with six counts related to these car burglaries, the stolen items, and possession of methamphetamine.
Kasrawi’s motion to suppress was denied. The Court of Appeal, per Dato, J., affirmed.
First, as to the detention, the court found (in a 2-1 split) that the detention was unlawful:
A reasonable person would not feel free to terminate such an encounter with law enforcement. Furthermore, the detention was unlawful because the factors known to Pardue at that point gave rise to no more than a mere hunch that Kasrawi might be involved in criminal activity.
On this point, the dissent by Benke, J., disagrees:
The majority acknowledges the spotlight alone might not have been enough to constitute a detention but asserts the “ ‘manner or mode’ ” of Pardue’s approach removed any ambiguity as to Kasrawi’s ability to leave. I disagree. As an initial matter, Pardue stopping his patrol car behind Kasrawi’s vehicle was not materially different than the actions of the officers in Perez and Tacardon, and, if anything, it was less aggressive.
Nevertheless, the taint of the unlawful detention was attenuated by the discovery of the outstanding warrant. From the majority opinion:
An illegal detention that uncovers evidence is generally subject to the exclusionary rule, which dictates the unlawfully obtained evidence be suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” (Wong Sun v. United States (1963) 371 U.S. 471, 488; People v. Krohn (2007) 149 Cal.App.4th 1294, 1299.) Kasrawi assumes that if we agree with him about the timing of his detention, then we would agree that his motion to suppress should have been granted in the trial court. But exceptions to the exclusionary rule apply “when the costs of exclusion outweigh its deterrent benefits.” (Strieff, supra, 136 S.Ct. at p. 2059.) One such exception is the intervening discovery of “a valid, pre-existing, and untainted arrest warrant.” (Id. at p. 2061.) When this kind of discovery is made, and there are no countervailing concerns about flagrant police misconduct, “the link between the unconstitutional conduct and the discovery of the evidence is too attenuated to justify suppression.” (Id. at p. 2059.) That was the case here, because Pardue’s quick discovery of Kasrawi’s outstanding warrant preceded the search incident to his arrest and cured the taint of the unlawful detention.