People v. Williams
| Decision Date | 13 December 1976 |
| Docket Number | No. 27337,27337 |
| Citation | 557 P.2d 399,192 Colo. 249 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Claudine Longet WILLIAMS, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | Colorado Supreme Court |
Frank G. E. Tucker, Dist. Atty., Ashley Anderson, Deputy Dist. Atty., Ninth Judicial Dist., Aspen, for plaintiff-appellant.
Charles V. Weedman, Los Angeles, Cal., Ronald D. Austin, Aspen, for defendant-appellee.
This is an interlocutory appeal seeking reversal of portions of a district court order suppressing evidence in a manslaughter case. After an extensive hearing on the defendant's motion, the trial court suppressed: (1) items of evidence (including the defendant's diary) found in a search of the defendant's residence, and (2) the results of laboratory tests performed on blood and urine samples obtained from the defendant despite her refusal to consent. We affirm.
A thorough review of the facts is essential to understanding the conclusions we have reached. Shortly before 5:50 p.m. on March 21, 1976, Lieutenant Baldridge of the Pitkin County Sheriff's office responded to a telephone report of a shooting at the Vladimir (Spider) Sabich residence in the Starwood subdivision near Aspen. The defendant and her three children had been living at the Sabich residence for some time. As Baldridge entered the subdivision's security gate, he picked up Roy Griffith, a private security officer who was on duty there. When the officers approached the Sabich residence, one of the defendant's children told them that Sabich had been shot.
Baldridge and Griffith arrived at the Sabich residence just ahead of an ambulance. Griffith Immediately entered the house without knocking. Several emergency medical technicians entered close behind Griffith, and Baldridge followed them in. Glancing down a hallway, Griffith saw the defendant, who said, 'in here, in here.' As Griffith went down the hallway, he asked, 'who shot who?' The defendant replied, 'I shot Spider; help him.' After Griffith observed Sabich lying wounded, and perhaps dead, on the bathroom floor, the defendant explained that a handgun had accidentally discharged while Sabich was showing her how to use it. She indicated that the gun was around somewhere.
Griffith went down the hall looking for the gun, and through an open bedroom door, he spotted a .22 caliber pistol lying on a bed and two long-barrelled guns standing in the cormer. Griffith delivered the pistol to Baldridge and informed him of the long guns. Baldridge immediately checked the latter, a rifle and a shotgun, and found they were not loaded.
The defendant was not arrested at the residence. Rather she was allowed to accompany Sabich in the ambulance to the hospital.
The house was then secured by the police. Griffith guarded the front door while Baldridge took photographs inside. Baldridge testified that while photographing, he noticed a ledger-type book (the diary here involved) on top of the dresser in the bedroom where the pistol had been found. However, Baldridge's testimony was contradicted by his own photographs, apparently made before this dresser was searched. These photographs clearly depict this dresser with all drawers neatly closed and no diary in sight. Other testimony revealed that this diary was normally kept inside the top dresser drawer and, in fact, was there when found. Photographs taken later that night showed the diary on top of the dresser but also revealed that the drawers obviously had been opened and re-closed, after Baldridge's photographs, leaving some drawers ajar with clothing protruding. Baldridge testified that he did open the top three dresser drawers, but that he had found the diary on top of the dresser before opening them.
On the basis of the conflicting testimony and the photographic evidence, the trial court found that Baldridge was mistaken in his testimony that he found the diary lying on top of the dresser. Rather the trial court, which heard the witnesses, found that the diary had been inside the closed dresser drawer and was found there in Baldridge's search without a warrant. Since competent evidence supports this finding, we accept it.
Baldridge opened the ledger after completing his photography and read enough to determine that it was somebody's diary. The diary was not removed from the residence until it was taken the next day pursuant to a search warrant.
While Griffith stood guard at the front door, Baldridge, without a warrant, searched the house for nearly two hours for other evidence connected with the shooting. During this time, Baldridge called a fellow officer and directed that the defendant be arrested. She was arrested at the hospital, given her Miranda 1 warnings, and taken to the sheriff's office.
A deputy district attorney told Baldridge that he had seen the defendant at a bar earlier on the day of the shooting. Baldridge had not noticed any odor of liquor in his contacts with the defendant at the Sabich house but did note a faint smell of liquor about her later. He ordered her returned to the hospital for blood and urine tests. These were performed over her objection. Officers and a hospital technician testified, without contradiction, that she did not appear at any time to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
At about 9:30 or 10:00 on the evening of the shooting, Baldridge, Griffith, the District Attorney, and members of the latter's staff returned to the Sabich house. Without any warrant, they conducted a second search throughout the house for evidence related to the shooting.
About mid-afternoon the next day, Lieutenant Baldridge and a deputy district attorney presented an affidavit to the Pitkin County Judge, and obtained a search warrant listing the diary as one of the items to be seized. Pursuant to this warrant, the diary which Baldridge had discovered and partially read the previous day was seized.
In seeking reversal of the trial court's suppression order, the People have raised two points of alleged error. First, it is claimed that the defendant's diary was properly seized pursuant to the search warrant and that Baldridge's first search, which provided the information for specifying the diary in the warrant, did not violate the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights. Second, it is claimed that the non-consensual taking of the blood and urine samples constituted a proper, limited search incident to arrest based on a clear indication that probative and highly evanescent evidence would be obtained. The People argue that it was error to suppress the diary and the results of these tests, thus rendering this evidence inadmissible at the forthcoming manslaughter trial. We consider these two categories of evidence separately.
The People assert that the seizure of the diary was accomplished pursuant to a properly issued and executed search warrant. However, the search which ultimately resulted in seizing the diary was completed the day before the search warrant was sought. Since the warrant issued the following day cannot relate back to legitimize Lieutenant Baldridge's search immediately after the shooting, 2 the critical inquiry is whether his initial search was unlawful when conducted.
The search by Lieutenant Baldridge in the early evening of March 21, 1976, was conducted without a warrant, before any arrest, and after the defendant had been allowed to leave with the ambulance. There is no claim that this search was incident to an arrest. The trial court found that it was a general search of the entire residence for evidence of the alleged crime, and this finding is amply supported by the evidence.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides protection against unreasonable searches and seizures in the following unequivocal language:
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, Houses, papers and Effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.' (Emphasis added.) 3
Clearly, a personal diary secreted under clothing in one's bedroom dresser drawer is an item of the kind intended to be protected by the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine what 'papers and effects' should be more entitled to privacy than one's personal diary. 4
Exceptions to the warrant requirement have been recognized in certain well-defined instances. 5 The People contend that one such exception, that for 'exigent circumstances,' justified the search which resulted in finding the diary. They also seem to contend that a new exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement should be recognized for a reasonable investigation at the scene of a recent homicide. Exceptions to the warrant requirement, however, must be carefully limited lest the Fourth Amendment's protections be eaten away by exceptions. 6
We turn now to an application of these principles to the original search which uncovered the diary. The diary was found in a search of the defendant's dresser conducted after she had already left and the house had been secured, but before she was arrested. The pistol involved in the shooting had already been discovered in plain sight, and the two long guns had been found to be unloaded. A guard had been posted at the front door, and the condition of the premises shortly after the incident had been recorded on film.
Under the circumstances, with the defendant gone and the house secured, there was no justification for not seeking a warrant from one of the locally available judges before proceeding with the search. There was no indication of any risk that evidence at the house might have been lost or destroyed while a warrant was being obtained.
The People, claiming that 'exigent circumstances' justified...
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