Search ruling reversed

When a Coeur d’Alene police officer stuck out her foot to keep the front door of a house from closing nearly three years ago, it opened the door for the Idaho Supreme Court to clarify state law on Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable search and seizure.

The state high court issued a unanimous decision Wednesday taking Kootenai County judges to task for upholding an illegal search that led to the arrest of Brian Maland, now 32, of Coeur d’Alene.

Coeur d’Alene police Officers Dacia Snyder (now Wild) and Pat Sullivan went to Maland’s house on the night of Jan. 2, 2002, to investigate a noise complaint but found there was no excessive noise when they arrived. The officers became suspicious when talking with Maland on the porch, kept him from closing his front door and later arrested him for having a suspended license and on a warrant for failing to appear in court in a traffic case.

Maland argued, through the Kootenai County public defenders office, that the evidence leading to his arrest was discovered through an illegal search and should be suppressed. Wild stuck her foot into the threshold, testimony in the case says, and Sullivan leaned against the door to keep Maland from shutting it.

First District Court Magistrate Judge Ben Simpson upheld the actions – stating “I find there was no entry … ” into Maland’s house – and his ruling was in turn affirmed by District Court Judge John Luster.

The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Roger Burdick, thought otherwise.

“That finding is clearly erroneous. The female officer inserted her foot into the threshold far enough to prevent Maland from closing his front door. That constituted an entry into Maland’s residence under the Fourth Amendment,” Burdick wrote, later citing case law that “Any physical invasion … by even a fraction of an inch, is too much.”

“We are happy with the decision restoring the Fourth Amendment’s primary goal to prohibit government agents from entering people’s houses without warrants or emergency situations,” Kootenai County Public Defender John Adams said Wednesday. “It’s been a straightforward law in this country for a couple hundred years.”

Adams argued the appeal in front of the Supreme Court.

During examination of the Maland appeal, the five justices also said they found flaws in two previous Idaho Supreme Court rulings that touch upon warrantless searches, writing that those cases “were wrongly decided and must be overruled.”

One in particular, State v. Manthei, “has led to the erroneous argument that law enforcement officers may enter a home to effectuate a Terry stop when there is no probable cause for arrest …” Burdick wrote.

A “Terry stop” is when a police officer has reason to believe a crime is imminent or that public safety is in jeopardy and uses his or her authority to stop and question people even if there is merely suspicion and no probable cause to make an arrest.

The U.S. Supreme Court backed up this authority in Terry v. Ohio in 1968.

The original Terry stop took place on public streets in downtown Cleveland, Burdick wrote in his decision, adding: “Compare this with today’s case, where law enforcement go to a home for a loud noise, hear no loud noise, continue to the defendant’s door and when they become suspicious in talking with him – about what we’re not sure – enter his home.”

The sanctity of home is the heart of Wednesday’s ruling, said Adams and Deputy Attorney General Kenneth Jorgensen, who argued the other side of the appeal.

“We had asked them to rule on Manthei,” Adams said. “We felt it was contrary to existing U.S. Supreme Court cases and extended Terry stops from the street into persons’ homes.”

Jorgensen, although on the losing end, agreed.

“I think one of the determining factors is that this happened in the doorway of a private home,” Jorgensen said from Boise. “Terry happened on a public street. Under the Fourth Amendment, a great deal of emphasis is placed on privacy interests in someone’s home.

“I think it’s probably too early to tell what kind of practical effect this will have on day-to-day law enforcement,” Jorgensen added. “Obviously, this represents some change in the law, so police officers need to be aware … there is some change in the law over what officers can do when they encounter suspicious circumstances on the doorstep of a house.”

Adams said: “I think it makes clear, if there was any doubt in the police mind, that there are only a few well-defined exceptions to the warrant requirement,” such as probable cause a felony is about to be committed or the risk of immediate harm to someone.

The fact that Maland, during the initial conversation with police, did not volunteer that his driver’s license was suspended “was irrelevant to the noise complaint,” Burdick wrote, later adding: “The law enforcement misconduct in this case was far from harmless.”

The justices ruled that Wild’s foot in the door “constituted illegal entry” and that the discovery of Maland’s suspended license “is a fruit of that illegal entry” and ordered the evidence suppressed. The case returns to Judge Simpson.