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State v. Lamont7/11/2001
tained search warrant a useless exercise? Deciding to act, the officers had the motel manager open the room with the master key. They found the defendant inside and he made an incriminating comment when the officers came in. Some of the bloody items were gone, but the officers were able to secure a piece of clothing with blood on it.
[ .] All the relevant circumstances suggesting that the accident was alcohol related in Storvick also existed here: strong evidence of negligent, inattentive driving, with apparent failure to stop at a stop sign; the late hour (2:00 a.m.) when drinking is often involved in accidents; flight from the scene of the accident, indicating that the driver perhaps did not want to confront the police because of the possibility of intoxication; no response to repeated knocking, suggesting that the "defendant either had passed out or that he heard the police and was not going to answer because he had something to hide, most likely that he had been drinking." See Storvick, 482 NW2d at 60. As the Minnesota Supreme Court concluded, the facts in their totality "provided an objective basis for believing that it was necessary to ascertain defendant's blood alcohol level." Id. at 60-61 (emphasis added). The court found that " he additional fact that 'the percentage of alcohol in the blood begins to diminish shortly after drinking stops, as the body functions to eliminate it from the system,' meant that ' here was no time to seek out a magistrate and secure a warrant.'" Id. at 61 (quoting Schmerber v. California, 384 US 757, 770-71, 86 SCt 1826, 1835-36, 16 LEd2d 908 (1966)).
[ .] Indeed, although the officers did not give it as a reason for their decision to enter the room, Judge Tice in his oral findings remarked that as a basis for entering the room, the officers here needed to act quickly to preserve blood alcohol evidence: " ecause of the nature of the fatality and time of day, there are possibilities, at least, of alcohol being involved." Judge Tice found that there were "reasons to believe that evidence might be diminished if the arrest [could not] be effected in a timely fashion."
[ .] With Fourth Amendment analysis, we generally avoid bright-line rules. See e.g. Ohio v. Robinette, 519 US 33, 39, 117 SCt 417, 421, 136 LEd2d 347 (1996). The "endless variations in the facts and circumstances" involving the Fourth Amendment make per se rules difficult to apply. Florida v. Royer, 460 US 491, 506, 103 SCt 1319, 1329, 75 LEd2d 229 (1983).
Thus, like the Minnesota Supreme Court in Storvick, which limited its holding to the grave circumstances in that case, we need not decide whether the result would be the same if, for example, the offense under investigation had been less serious. Storvick, 428 NW2d at 61. But here an extremely serious offense occurred, and an objectively reasonable basis existed to enter the defendant's room.
D.
[ .] In discussing transitory evidence cases, Professor LaFave stresses the distinction between "planned" arrests and those made in the course of an ongoing "field investigation." 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 6.1(f), at 271-73 (3d ed 1995). The Connecticut Supreme Court used LaFave's analysis in State v. Guertin, 461 A2d 963 (Conn 1983). In explaining this approach, the court stated:
[LaFave] defines a "planned" arrest as "one which is made after a criminal investigation has been fully completed at another location and the police make a deliberate decision to go to a certain place, either the arrestee's home or some other premises where he [or she] is believed to be, in order to take him [or her] into custody." In the "planned" arrest situation he suggests that any claimed exige
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