No-Warrant Search Was Reasonable, Court Rules Estranged Wife Gave Police Permission To Search House

The Idaho Supreme Court says if police have reasonable grounds to believe they have permission for a search, the search is proper even if it turns out the permission was given without authority.

Idaho criminal law previously held that a search without a warrant had to be “reasonable,” and that a person allowing the search had to have actual authority to allow it.

But in a case decided Friday, a 3-2 majority of the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the officer involved had good reason to believe the woman who allowed the warrantless search had authority to do so. That reasonable belief meets both state and federal constitutional requirements, the majority said.

Justice Cathy Silak wrote the majority opinion, supported by Justices Linda Copple Trout and Gerald Schroeder.

But Justice Byron Johnson, in a dissent joined by Chief Justice Charles McDevitt, wrote that the majority’s decision “does serious violence” to constitutional guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

“A warrantless search is per se unreasonable unless it is made under one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement; one of these exceptions is a search conducted pursuant to a properly given consent.

“An officer’s reasonable belief that the person giving consent actually had authority to consent, does not create authority,” Johnson said.

The case involved Jerome County drug charges against Joseph McCaughey. After a domestic dispute his estranged wife, who was moving to Utah, said McCaughey had a large supply of marijuana at his house. She led an officer to it, and McCaughey was charged with trafficking in more than 25 pounds of marijuana.

McCaughey entered a conditional guilty plea, but a 5th District judge suppressed the drug evidence because the woman did not have authority to grant permission for a search.

Friday’s Supreme Court ruling sent the case back to district court.

In another decision released Friday, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Blaine County zoning change that will prevent extensive retail development on 12.6 acres of land in Hailey. The city in 1993 changed the zoning on that property from business to limited business.

A planner testified that zoned for limited business the land would be worth $2.5 million, compared with $3.3 million under the less restrictive business zoning, which allows for more development of the property.

The landowners - Spenger, Grubb and Associates Inc. - argued that the change amounted to an improper taking of private property, since the land was worth less under the new zoning.

But the Supreme Court said an owner has no vested interest in the highest and best use of his land, in financial terms.

“This court has repeatedly declared that a zoning ordinance which downgrades the economic value of property does not constitute a taking of property … where some residual value remains in the property,” the decision said.