State v. LaRosa

• Decision Date: 18 November 2021
• Docket Number: No. 2020-0337,2020-0337
• Citation: 165 Ohio St.3d 346,179 N.E.3d 89
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. LAROSA, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

165 Ohio St.3d 346

179 N.E.3d 89

The STATE of Ohio, Appellee,

v.LAROSA, Appellant.

No. 2020-0337

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted March 3, 2021

Decided November 18, 2021.

Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County Prosecuting Attorney, and Christopher Becker and Asleigh Musick, Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys, for appellee.

Maro & Schoenike Co. and Lynn A. Maro, Boardman, for appellant.

Fischer, J. {¶ 1} In this appeal from a judgment of the Eleventh District Court of Appeals, we are asked to determine whether the warrantless seizure of certain evidence from a person's hospital room and the taking of evidence from the person's fingernails violated the person's right against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. We hold that one of the seizures and the search at issue in this case did not violate the Fourth Amendment. We further hold that although other seizures at issue did violate the Fourth Amendment, the admission of evidence obtained from those seizures was harmless error. We accordingly affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

{¶ 2} In the late afternoon of March 31, 2015, appellant, Jacob LaRosa, then 15 years old, arrived home with blood on himself. Believing that LaRosa had been assaulted, his mother contacted the Niles Police Department. When Officer Todd Mobley arrived at LaRosa's home, he found LaRosa, who appeared intoxicated, wearing only socks and underwear and repeatedly saying words to the effect of "they're going to kill me for this." Officer Mobley noticed that LaRosa had blood on him but did not have any visible injuries. Officer Mobley arranged for LaRosa to be transported to the hospital by ambulance.

{¶ 3} As LaRosa was being loaded into the ambulance, Officer Mobley was directed toward the home directly across an alleyway from LaRosa's home. Upon approaching the neighboring home, which was the residence of Marie Belcastro, the victim here, Officer Mobley met Belcastro's daughter. Officer Mobley was joined at Belcastro's home by Detective Craig Aurilo and Detective James Robbins. They found that the door had been kicked or shouldered in and that there was "blood everywhere." They discovered Belcastro's deceased body in a bedroom.

{¶ 4} LaRosa appeared to still be intoxicated when he arrived at the hospital, and he was incoherent. Officer Michael Biddlestone arrived at the hospital with instructions to secure LaRosa as a suspect regarding Belcastro's death. After finding LaRosa in the hospital's emergency room, Officer Biddlestone handcuffed him to the bed.

{¶ 5} During a hearing on LaRosa's motion to suppress the evidence that was gathered at the hospital, Officer Biddlestone testified that LaRosa's socks and underwear had been removed by hospital staff so that they could provide medical treatment to LaRosa. Officer Biddlestone further stated that when LaRosa was urinating, the nurse who assisted LaRosa advised the officer that there was blood on LaRosa's groin, and the nurse wiped LaRosa's groin clean with a hospital washcloth. Officer Biddlestone stated that he obtained LaRosa's previously removed socks and underwear from hospital staff along with the hospital's washcloth that was used to clean LaRosa.

{¶ 6} While LaRosa was at the hospital, Detective Aurilo obtained a warrant for the search of LaRosa's body. The warrant permitted buccal, penile, and hand swabs of LaRosa. Pursuant to the search warrant, hospital personnel obtained fingernail scrapings from LaRosa and provided the scrapings to Detective Aurilo.

{¶ 7} LaRosa was subsequently charged in the Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas, Juvenile Division, with delinquency counts relating to Belcastro's death. The juvenile court granted the state's motion to transfer the case to the general division of the common pleas court for criminal prosecution of LaRosa as an adult.

{¶ 8} After the transfer of the case to adult court, LaRosa was indicted on one count of aggravated murder in violation of R.C. 2903.01(B) and (F), one count of aggravated burglary in violation of R.C. 2911.11(A)(1) and (2) and (B), one count of aggravated robbery in violation of R.C. 2911.01(A)(1) and (3) and (C), and one count of attempted rape in violation of R.C. 2923.02(A) and (E)(1) and 2907.02(A)(2) and (B). As discussed above, LaRosa filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from his hospital room, including his socks and underwear, the washcloth, and his fingernail scrapings.

{¶ 9} The trial court denied the motion to suppress following a hearing on the matter. It concluded that the scraping of LaRosa's fingernails fell within the scope of the search warrant, because the warrant provided for a "hand swab" and fingernails are a part of the hand. As to the socks and underwear, the court concluded that a defendant has no expectation of privacy in clothing that is removed from the defendant when he voluntarily presents himself for treatment at a hospital emergency room purporting to be a victim and that the Fourth Amendment's protections accordingly did not apply to the seizure of LaRosa's removed clothing.

{¶ 10} Finally, the trial court concluded that LaRosa had no expectation of privacy in the washcloth, because the washcloth was the hospital's property. Although the court determined that LaRosa presented a colorable argument that he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the washcloth because it had his urine on it, the court determined that the inevitable-discovery exception to the warrant requirement applied and permitted the admission of evidence relating to the washcloth. The court reasoned that because police had a search warrant for a swab of LaRosa's penis and secured that swab, the evidence relating to the washcloth was also secured by the swab. The court further noted that there was no evidence that the blood on the washcloth belonged to LaRosa and that it was likely the victim's blood, since there was no evidence that LaRosa had been injured in any way, and that LaRosa had no expectation of privacy in someone else's blood.

{¶ 11} After the trial court denied LaRosa's motion to suppress, the case proceeded to trial. After one day of voir dire, LaRosa entered a no-contest plea to all the charges. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the aggravated-murder count and an aggregate prison sentence of 30 years on the other counts, to be served consecutively to the life-without-parole sentence. LaRosa was also classified as a Tier III sex offender.

{¶ 12} The Eleventh District affirmed LaRosa's convictions and sentence in a unanimous decision. 2020-Ohio-160, 2020 WL 290967, ¶ 94. The court of appeals held that because LaRosa's socks and underwear were initially seized by a nurse attempting to treat him for alleged injuries, there was no governmental action involved in the seizure and the protections of the Fourth Amendment did not apply. Id. at ¶ 53. The court further held that because the washcloth was not LaRosa's property, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy in it and its seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id. As to the fingernail scrapings, the Eleventh District agreed with the trial court's determination that the term "hand swabs," as used in the warrant, encompassed fingernail scrapings. Id. at ¶ 57.

{¶ 13} We accepted LaRosa's discretionary appeal to consider the following proposition of law: "The seizure of personal items from a hospital room, without consent and without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment." See 158 Ohio St.3d 1526, 2020-Ohio-3016, 145 N.E.3d 325.

II. ANALYSIS

{¶ 14} As an initial matter, we note that although the proposition of law that we accepted for review is premised on only the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, LaRosa argues in his merit brief that the evidence in question should have been suppressed under both the Fourth Amendment and Article I, Section 14 of the Ohio Constitution. Although LaRosa did not refer to the Ohio Constitution in the proposition of law that he submitted to this court for consideration, he did refer to Article I, Section 14 in his argument supporting the proposition of law and in the assignment of error that he raised in the court of appeals below.

{¶ 15} In his merit brief, however, LaRosa offers no argument specific to the Ohio Constitution and instead focuses his argument on the Fourth Amendment and federal caselaw. Indeed, the only discussion that he presents regarding the Ohio Constitution is his statement that "[t]he Constitution of the State of Ohio likewise provides similar protections [to those of the Fourth Amendment] against unregulated search and seizure by the government." Because LaRosa offers no argument specific to the Ohio Constitution and because he does not argue that its protections differ from those provided by the Fourth Amendment, our analysis focuses on only the Fourth Amendment's application in this case.

{¶ 16} The Fourth Amendment protects people against unreasonable searches and seizures. In accordance with those protections, the state has the burden to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that a defendant's property was not illegally seized or that no illegal search occurred in violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. See Athens v. Wolf , 38 Ohio St.2d 237, 241, 313 N.E.2d 405 (1974).

{¶ 17} Appellate review of a motion to suppress presents a mixed question of law and fact. State v. Burnside , 100 Ohio St.3d 152, 2003-Ohio-5372, 797 N.E.2d 71, ¶ 8. The reviewing court must accept the trial court's findings of fact if they are supported by competent, credible evidence, and the court reviews the trial court's legal conclusions de novo. Id.

A. The Propriety of the Seizures

{¶ 18} Because the evidence that LaRosa sought to suppress falls into three distinct categories, we will discuss each of those categories in turn. First, we will address the seizure of the hospital's washcloth that was used...