State v. Mountford, 98-540.

• Decision Date: 29 December 2000
• Docket Number: No. 98-540.,98-540.
• Citation: 769 A.2d 639
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Vermont v. Joseph W. MOUNTFORD.

769 A.2d 639

STATE of Vermont v. Joseph W. MOUNTFORD.

No. 98-540.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

December 29, 2000.

Dale O. Gray, Caledonia County State's Attorney, and Alan M. Singer, Deputy State's Attorney, St. Johnsbury, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

David C. Sleigh of Sleigh & Williams, St. Johnsbury, for Defendant-Appellant.

Present: AMESTOY, C.J., DOOLEY, MORSE, JOHNSON and SKOGLUND, JJ.

DOOLEY, Justice.

Defendant Joseph Mountford appeals from a judgment entered in the Caledonia District Court on his conditional plea of guilty to a charge of possession of alcohol by a minor in violation of 7 V.S.A. § 657. Summoned by an early morning complaint of a loud party at defendant's home, police arrived to find the premises in disarray and defendant visible through a window, apparently watching television. When defendant ignored their entreaties, the police entered without a warrant. Defendant now challenges the district court's refusal to suppress the evidence thereby acquired. We conclude that the police were justified in entering the premises on an emergency basis, but cannot determine from the record the subjective motive for their entry or whether they exceeded the scope of constitutionally permissible activity. Accordingly, we remand the matter for further evidence and fact finding.

After conducting an evidentiary hearing, the district court made the following findings. Early in the morning of March 15, 1998, the state police received a call from a resident of Lyndonville complaining of a loud party next door at a residence to which state police had been summoned twice before. The two officers who responded found no party in progress when they arrived, but they did notice beer cans and bottles strewn upon the lawn and front porch. They proceeded to the front porch and found the front door of the home open, the storm door closed and the glass in the upper portion of the storm door broken. Through the door they observed that beer bottles and other debris were strewn about the kitchen and that a telephone appeared to have been torn from the wall. They knocked on the door and announced themselves, receiving no response. The officers then looked through a window with a view into the living room and observed defendant seated on a couch and staring at a television. The officers sought to attract defendant's attention, first by shouting and knocking and then by shining their flashlights through the window into defendant's eyes. Defendant was unresponsive. The officers resumed knocking on the front door.

At this point, defendant stood and walked toward another room. He walked directly into a wall, stumbled backward and then stumbled into the other room, disappearing from the officers' sight. The officers resumed knocking and announcing their presence. Again receiving no response, and believing that defendant was extremely intoxicated and/or in need of medical attention, the officers entered the home and found defendant seated on the couch. They questioned defendant and learned that he was nineteen years of age, that he had been drinking, and that others had been present but had left. During the questioning, the troopers saw several more beer bottles and "illicit drug paraphernalia" scattered about the residence. One hour after they first arrived, they administered a breath test to defendant and found that he had a BAC of .211. They released him into the custody of a roommate who arrived, after first giving him a citation to appear to answer a charge of possession of alcohol by a minor.

Defendant moved to suppress all evidence obtained by the officers as a result of their warrantless entry into his home. The district court conducted an evidentiary hearing and denied defendant's motion based on the so-called "community caretaking" exception to the constitutional requirement of a search warrant. See Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 441, 93 S.Ct. 2523, 37 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973) (noting that such functions are "totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute"); State v. Marcello, 157 Vt. 657, 658, 599 A.2d 357, 358 (1991) (mem.) (applying Cady and noting "essential role" of police in assisting persons in distress). The court found that "police who have probable cause, based on specific articulable facts, to believe that immediate entry is necessary to assist a person who may be in serious need of medical aid, may enter without a warrant." The court found that this test was met in this case. Defendant entered a conditional plea of guilty pursuant to V.R.Cr.P. 11(a)(2), reserving the right to appeal the denial of the motion to suppress, and this appeal followed.

Challenging the officers' warrantless entry into his home, defendant invokes both the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and its analog, Chapter I, Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution. Defendant relies primarily on the warrant requirement, which we have described as the "first and foremost line of protection" afforded by these constitutional provisions. State v. Morris, 165 Vt. 111, 115, 680 A.2d 90, 93 (1996). "Requiring advance judicial approval before subjecting persons to police searches represents a balance in which an individual's privacy interest outweighs the burdens on law enforcement in obtaining a warrant." Id. Thus, the police are prohibited from deciding on their own, without the approval of a neutral judicial officer, to invade a person's privacy unless "exceptional circumstances" justify a departure from the warrant requirement. Id.

The State argues, however, that the warrantless intrusion of the police into defendant's apartment is justified by their reasonable concern that defendant was in need of emergency assistance. It argues further that once the officers entered the apartment, they could use what evidence was in plain view and interrogate defendant in the course of coming to his aid. The district court generally accepted this argument.

As an adjunct to, or part of, the community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement, courts have recognized an exception for entry to render emergency assistance.¹ The United States Supreme Court recognized such an exception in Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 392-93, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978), and this Court did so in State v. Connolly, 133 Vt. 565, 571, 350 A.2d 364, 368 (1975), although neither case sets out the contours of the exception. The leading case laying out the requirements of the exception is People v. Mitchell, 39 N.Y.2d 173, 383 N.Y.S.2d 246, 347 N.E.2d 607 (1976), which held:

[W]e think it necessary to articulate some guidelines for the application of the "emergency" doctrine. The basic elements of the exception may be summarized in the following manner:

(1) The police must have reasonable grounds to believe that there is an emergency at hand and an immediate need for their assistance for the protection of life or property.

(2) The search must not be primarily motivated by intent to arrest and seize evidence.

(3) There must be some reasonable basis, approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be searched.

Id. at 609. Most courts that have considered this issue have accepted the Mitchell three-prong test, or some variation of it. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure: A Treatise on the Fourth Amendment § 6.6(a), at 392-93 (3d ed.1996). See generally J. Decker, Emergency Circumstances, Police Responses, and Fourth Amendment Restrictions, 89 J.Crim. L. & Criminology 433, 440-41 (1999) (explaining three-pronged test similar to that in Mitchell). We accept the Mitchell standard, subject to refinement in future decisions and as explained below.

In accepting the Mitchell test, we acknowledge that it requires us to delve into the subjective motivation of police officers, an inquiry courts usually find inappropriate in Fourth Amendment cases. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813, 116 S.Ct. 1769, 135 L.Ed.2d 89 (1996) ("we have been unwilling to entertain Fourth Amendment challenges based on the actual motivations of individual officers"). Indeed, the United States Supreme Court has "never held, outside the context of inventory search or administrative inspection ... that an officer's motive invalidates objectively justifiable behavior under the Fourth Amendment." Id. at 812, 116 S.Ct. 1769; cf. State v. Hollis, 161 Vt. 87, 92-95, 633 A.2d 1362, 1365-66 (1993) (noting wide variety of circumstances in which courts have disregarded subjective motivations of officers, and explaining circumstances in which legal justification for arrest may support subsequent search, even if that justification does not comport with officer's actual motive for arrest); State v. Towne, 158 Vt. 607, 629-30, 615 A.2d 484, 496-97 (1992) (noting that majority of federal courts, in considering validity of arrest, have employed two-part test that limits Fourth Amendment analysis to examination of objective legality of arrest).

But in cases "addressing the validity of a search conducted in the absence of probable cause," such as administrative or inventory searches, the Supreme Court has indicated that examining the subjective motivations of officers is necessary to assure that the civil or quasi-criminal searches do not serve as a pretext for criminal investigations. Whren, 517 U.S. at 811-12, 116 S.Ct. 1769; see United States v. Cervantes, 219 F.3d 882, 889-90 (9th Cir.2000) (although Whren did not address whether motivation of officer is relevant to reasonableness of searches under emergency-aid doctrine, it suggests, by distinguishing between cases that require probable cause and those that do not, that motivation of officer is relevant whenever no probable cause exists, as is always true in emergency-aid cases); 1 LaFave, supra, § 1.4, at 21-22 (Supp.2000) (given way in which Whren distinguished inventory and administrative searches, pretext-type claims will still...