Commonwealth v. Porter P., a juvenile, March 11, 2010
456 Mass. 254
The Commonwealth appealed the Juvenile Court’s granting of a motion to suppress evidence (a gun and a statement) seized during a search conducted by police of the juvenile defendant’s room in a transitional family shelter. The police conducted the warrantless search of the room after being given consent by the shelter’s director. The defendant argued that the warrantless search of the room and seizure of the gun violated the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights; and that his statement to police after the seizure should also be suppressed as “fruit of the poisonous tree” of the illegal search and seizure under Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1983). The SJC affirmed the allowance of the motion to suppress, excluding both the gun and the statement.
Search; Home; Expectation of Privacy.
The SJC first addressed whether a search in the constitutional sense took place by examining whether the police had intruded on a constitutionally protected reasonable expectation of privacy. The court found that a search had in fact taken place for the defendant did have a privacy interest in his room at the transitional shelter. Whereas in some instances in order to determine the existence of a privacy interest, the court must consider various factors (such as the nature of the place searched, others’ access to the place etc.), in the present case, the search took place within the defendant’s room in his home and that fact is determinative. The Fourth Amendment and article 14 expressly provide that every person has the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures in his home. The fact that the home here was a transitional shelter does not affect the calculation – the defendant has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his home.
Consent; Reasonableness; Actual Authority; Apparent Authority.
Because the defendant did have an expectation of privacy and the police did enter without a search warrant and without any claim of exigency, the SJC next considered whether the Commonwealth had proved the entry was reasonable because the police had the consent of a person with actual or apparent authority over the room. The director of the transitional shelter had given the police consent to search the room, thus the question became whether the shelter director had actual or apparent authority.
The court determined that the shelter director did not have actual authority to give consent. A third party has actual authority to consent to a warrantless search of a home when the third party shares common authority over the home based upon a theory of mutual use, joint access, and control. The SJC noted the need for a clear rule in this area and therefore declared that under article 14, a person may have actual authority to consent to a warrantless search of a home only if “(1) the person is a coinhabitant with a shared right of access to the home, that is, the person lives in the home, either as a member of the family, a roommate, or a houseguest whose stay is of substantial duration and who is given full access to the home; or (2) the person, generally a landlord, shows the police a written contract entitling that person to allow the police to enter the home to search for and seize contraband or evidence.” The shelter director does not fall into either category: she was not a coinhabitant of the room and the shelter manual did not allow the police to enter the defendant’s room and search for evidence. The shelter director therefore did not have actual authority.
The court then turned to the question of whether the shelter director had apparent authority to consent to the search, which consists of a determination of the objective reasonableness of the (mistaken) belief of authority. The SJC noted that federal courts have universally limited apparent authority to reasonable mistakes of fact – not mistakes of law – such that a police officer’s reasonable mistaken belief of the law does not establish apparent authority. In the current case, the police made a mistake of law: they did not mistakenly understand the facts or the shelter director’s position or situation, rather they believed the facts and situation did give them valid consent to conduct the search. Accordingly, the shelter director did not have apparent authority.
Because the defendant had a privacy interest, the police did not have a search warrant or exigent circumstances, and the shelter director did not have actual or apparent authority, the search was not reasonable under the Fourth Amendment or article 14.
Article 14; Apparent Authority.
Although not required, the SJC did consider the issue of whether under article 14, apparent authority may justify a warrantless search of a home. While in past decisions the court had suggested that apparent authority (without actual authority) might justify such a search, the court here explicitly adopted the doctrine of apparent authority under article 14. The court noted that article 14 enables police to enter a home in four instances: (1) with a judicial warrant supported by probable cause; (2) with probable cause plus exigency (i.e. hot pursuit); (3) under the “emergency aid” doctrine (wherein the police have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that someone inside the home may be harmed or in imminent danger of harm); and (4) with the voluntary consent of a person with common authority over the home. In the first three circumstances, there is no violation of article 14 if there is a reasonable mistake of fact, and therefore, regarding the fourth circumstance, the court similarly finds that there is no violation of article 14 if the police officer obtains the voluntary consent of a person whom he reasonably but mistakenly believes has common authority over the home.
The court noted that the police must engage in a “diligent inquiry” into the consenting individual’s common authority over the home. This “diligent inquiry” consists of two basic steps that must be taken by the police officer: (1) the officer must base his conclusion on (sufficient) facts, not assumptions or impressions; and (2) the officer has a duty to “explore, rather than ignore, contrary facts” that may exist such that the officer must make further investigation and inquiry if there are ambiguous or opposing facts. The SJC therefore adopted the apparent authority rule here but did comment that it is still not adopting the “good faith” exception to the exclusionary rule adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Leon, 449 Mass. 562 (2007), finding no “logical conflict” in adopting one but not the other.
Suppression.
The SJC accordingly affirmed the suppression of the firearm seized by the police during the warrantless, unauthorized search and the defendant’s subsequent statement to the police as “fruit of the poisonous tree.” The statement was properly suppressed, despite the fact that it was spontaneous and not in response to any direct police questioning.
