People v. Knapp

• Decision Date: 14 May 1981
• Citation: 439 N.Y.S.2d 871,52 N.Y.2d 689,422 N.E.2d 531
• Parties: , 422 N.E.2d 531 The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Warren Joseph KNAPP, Appellant.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

Page 871

439 N.Y.S.2d 871

52 N.Y.2d 689, 422 N.E.2d 531

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. Warren Joseph KNAPP, Appellant.

Court of Appeals of New York.

May 14, 1981.

Anna M. Perry and John F. Middlemiss, Jr., Stony Brook, for appellant

Patrick Henry, Dist. Atty. (Charles M. Newell, Riverhead, of counsel), for respondent.

OPINION OF THE COURT

FUCHSBERG, Judge.

Defendant Warren Knapp was convicted, following a jury trial, of criminal possession and of criminal sale of a controlled substance, each in the sixth degree (Penal Law, §§ 220.06, 220.31). The Appellate Division, 75 A.D.2d 586, 426 N.Y.S.2d 636 having affirmed, the appeal is here by permission of a Judge of this court (CPL 460.20).

In the main, we are called upon to decide whether the warrantless search of defendant's home, conducted at the time of his arrest, was reasonable within the meaning of our Constitutions (N.Y.Const., art. I, § 12; U.S.Const., 4th, 14th Amdts.). For the reasons which follow, we conclude that, in important part, it was not.

The recital of the facts, taken in a light most favorable to the People, may well begin with the role played by a 21-year-old biochemistry student, Frederick Allen Botway, who, in expectation that he would receive favorable consideration on an unrelated pending drug charge for which he was then under indictment, agreed to act as a police informer. In pursuit of that undertaking, and with the encouragement of Detective Robert Sievers, a Suffolk County undercover agent, Botway accepted an opportunity offered by an acquaintance, the defendant Warren Knapp, to guide and assist the latter, who was relatively ignorant of chemistry, in a project to produce a quantity of the controlled drug methaqualone.

The work had already begun, and with Botway's help, continued in the basement of the defendant's house. When it had progressed to a point where the manufacture was almost complete, Knapp told Botway that he expected to effect a sale of the drugs to a third party. On learning of this development, Sievers instructed Botway to tell Knapp that he had a friend who was interested in buying it. After an interval during which the informer reported on some supposed discussions with his prospect, a "friend Bob", Knapp expressed a willingness to make such a sale at a contemplated price in the range of seven to eight hundred dollars, to be shared between Knapp and Botway. A time was then fixed for Botway to bring "Bob" to the house where he could meet Knapp and make his planned purchase.

When early on the appointed day, Botway, "friend Bob" in the person of Sievers in tow, arrived at the house, they came to the back door where Knapp, still in a bathrobe, admitted them directly to the kitchen. Unbeknownst to Knapp, a back-up team of four other police officers was waiting nearby to assist Sievers and Botway. After the introduction, the defendant left for his personal bedroom, from whence he returned with two plates, each of which contained a portion of the drugs. He set these down on the kitchen counter. Asked by Sievers whether that was the total, he replied that there was an additional plateful, along with a supply of capsules in which the drugs could be packaged for convenient ingestion, still in his bedroom. Sievers and Knapp then confirmed a price of $750.

At this point, the agreement to sell having been completed, as prearranged between Sievers and his informer, the latter was dispatched, ostensibly to get the money from a car, but in fact to signal the waiting police reinforcements, who, also gaining access through the rear door, entered the kitchen, where Knapp was about to be arrested. The informer having previously alerted his cohorts to the fact that the defendant rented bedrooms to four individuals who at that hour might still be in the house, the police at once rounded up and secured all four. By then, Sievers and company had also taken possession of the drugs the defendant had brought into the kitchen.

It was only after they had assured themselves of complete control of the house and its occupants that the police took their next step, a warrantless entry into defendant's bedroom. There they found and seized the capsules and the third plate of methaqualone of which Knapp had spoken to Sievers.

The final relevant police activity in the house was to search the basement. The testimony indicates that this they did not do until 45 minutes to an hour after the arrest. As a result of Sievers' superintendence of the informer's earlier activity, the police, of course, had known well in advance that this was the location of the defendant's homemade laboratory. There, besides some electronic appliances, they seized Bunsen burners, test tubes, chemicals, "raw" methaqualone and assorted pills.

Following a pretrial hearing, an omnibus motion to suppress the objects seized in the defendant's home was denied. County Court, without differentiating among its various phases, sweepingly held that the search and seizure "was a reasonable and proper activity" "made during the course of and immediately following such arrest". In so doing, the court failed to recognize that, analytically, there were three different seizures. Reviewing these in chronological order, the avails of the first were the two plates seized in the kitchen at the time of Knapp's arrest. The fruits of the second, which flowed from the search of Knapp's personal bedroom, were the third plate and capsules. It was in the last one, of the basement, that the People gained possession of the "laboratory" articles.

In the evaluation of each of these episodes of the broader event, we start with the reminder that our Constitutions accord special protection to a person's expectation of privacy in his own home (N.Y.Const., art. I, § 12; U.S.Const., 4th, 14th Amdts.; Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, ----, 101 S.Ct. 1642, 1649, 68 L.Ed.2d 38; Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585, 589-590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 1379, 1381-82, 63 L.Ed.2d 639; People v. Calhoun, 49 N.Y.2d 398, 402, 426 N.Y.S.2d 243, 402 N.E.2d 1145). To further insulate this right, subject only to carefully drawn and narrow exceptions, a warrantless search of an individual's home is per se unreasonable and hence unconstitutional (Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393-394, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 2413-14, 57 L.Ed.2d 290; People v. Gonzalez, 39 N.Y.2d 122, 127, 383 N.Y.S.2d 215, 347 N.E.2d 575; People v. Williams, 37 N.Y.2d 206, 371 N.Y.S.2d 880, 333 N.E.2d 160). Further, to militate against any rationalizing away of these protections, the burden of proving the existence of sufficiently exceptional circumstances is placed squarely on the shoulders of the government (Vale v. Louisiana, 399 U.S. 30, 34, 90 S.Ct. 1969, 1971-72, 26 L.Ed.2d 409; accord People v. Hodge, 44 N.Y.2d 553, 557, 406 N.Y.S.2d 736, 378 N.E.2d 99). All the more is this so when there is ample opportunity to obtain a warrant (compare People v. Hicks, 38 N.Y.2d 90, 378 N.Y.S.2d 660, 341 N.E.2d 227, with People v. Spinelli, 35 N.Y.2d 77, 81-82, 358 N.Y.S.2d 743, 315 N.E.2d 792).

We now turn to each phase of the search to determine whether the burden of proving that the fundamental and interrelated principles to which we have referred were respected in each instance.

The seizure of the two plates in the kitchen is easiest to justify because it was a search incident to arrest. Obviously, an arrest may provide a ready motive for a desperate suspect to attempt to offer resistance, with or without available weapons, or to destroy any incriminatory evidence that is within his reach. To guard against such eventuality, not the least of which is danger to the arresting officers themselves, the law, with sense and practicality, permits a limited "search of the arrestee's person and the 'area' within his immediate control" to take place then and there (Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 752, 763, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 2040, 23 L.Ed.2d 685; see, also, People v. Belton, 50 N.Y.2d 447, 429 N.Y.S.2d 574, 407 N.E.2d 420, cert. granted 449 U.S. 1109, 101 S.Ct. 917, 66 L.Ed.2d 838; People v. Perel, 34 N.Y.2d 462, 358 N.Y.S.2d 383, 315 N.E.2d 452).

By this criterion, we cannot say that the kitchen search was unreasonable as a matter of law. Targeted to the two plates alone, it involved no rummaging. Nor was it an independent investigative inquiry. In real perspective, the cautionary search for and assembling of the renters, the consummation of the arrest and the protective seizure of the two plates of contraband were going forward contemporaneously, the latter two in close proximity in the same room.

In this temporal and spatial immediacy, it could have needed no more than the movements of an unsuccessful struggle to reach and scatter the plates, whose uncapsulated contents were later to be described as mucous-like in consistency. Moreover, it was too early to reliably appraise defendant's penchant for resistance or destruction, if any, or his ability, at all odds, to essay either. Under these circumstances, the affirmed findings upholding the reasonableness of this judgment in the "field" may not be disturbed (see People v. Alexander, 37 N.Y.2d 202, 204, 371 N.Y.S.2d 876, 333 N.E.2d 157).

In contrast, the subsequent searches of the bedrooms and the basement give us more than pause. To justify these, the People place primary reliance upon the exception carved out for "exigent circumstances" and, alternatively, upon the one for "plain view". And, as an ultimate resort, after candidly recognizing that the 45 minute to an hour hiatus between the arrest and the search of the basement made that one in particular difficult, if not impossible, to defend, the People also urge us to sustain that seizure, as well as the one in the bedroom, either on a theory of inevitable discovery or on its pragmatically related cousin, harmless error.

The "exigent circumstances" doctrine, which allows for broader application of much of the logic which permeates the...