State Supreme Court Warns Police On Scope Of Searches

HARTFORD (AP) — Police searches conducted without a warrant that seek weapons or dangerous accomplices on premises near the scene of an arrest should be based on more than just hunches, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

The high court put police on notice with a 4-1 decision last week that ruled an April 2000 search of the Stamford apartment of Michael Spencer was unconstitutional, and barred evidence from a dish containing crack-cocaine residue seized during the search.

“The generalized possibility that an unknown, armed person may be lurking is not, however, an articulable fact sufficient to justify a protective search,” Justice Joette Katz wrote for the majority in the ruling issued Monday. The court indicated that any such “protective sweep searches” will be scrutinized.

Spencer was arrested in the doorway of his apartment building after accepting a Federal Express package addressed to a Sylvia Sloan at his apartment number and containing five pounds of marijuana.

The package — first intercepted by sheriffs in Shelby County, Tenn. — originally contained 27 pounds of marijuana. Sheriffs notified Stamford police, repackaged the drugs and forwarded it to Spencer. During his arrest, officers noticed the door to his second-floor apartment was ajar. When he refused to tell them whether anyone else was in the apartment, officers searched the premises and found the crack evidence and a crack pipe. No one named Sylvia Sloan was ever found.

The trial court allowed the crack evidence to be introduced, which exposed Spencer to a seven-year prison sentence. The Supreme Court reversed that ruling on Monday.

That ruling recognized two levels of protective sweeps that may be conducted by police without a warrant. First tier sweeps may be made of areas immediately next to the scene of the arrest, such as closets. Second tier sweeps of a broader area not adjacent to the arrest can be made only if a reasonably prudent officer, using specific facts combined with reasonable inferences, believes the area harbors a person who poses a danger to the police or public.

In its ruling the high court noted that that the testimony by Stamford police officers at Spencer’s trial “reveals that they had no information that any person who posed a threat to the officers or to others might have been in the apartment at that time.”

The officers also testified they were unfamiliar with Spencer before being contacted by the Shelby sheriffs, and their investigation revealed no one living at his address who might have been armed or involved in the drug trade.

Furthermore, the majority reasoned, Spencer’s silence when asked if anyone was in his apartment might have been his invocation of his Miranda right to remain silent, rather than an elusive response.

“Therefore the defendant’s silence, standing alone, is of minimal value to our inquiry,” Katz wrote.

The ruling drew a sharp rebuke from dissenting Justice David M. Borden, who said the majority’s reasoning is “fundamentally flawed.”

He criticized the majority for using a narrow focus instead of a more objective analysis that would examine what any reasonable officer would do in similar circumstances.

Borden listed various facts justifying the search. He said the volume of the original 27-pound shipment suggested it was destined for a large-scale drug operation, which seldom is run by one person and that apartment was in a neighborhood known for high drug activity.

“We have often stated, as the police officers testified in the present case, that it is reasonable for police officers to suspect guns to be associated with illegal drug-selling operations,” Borden wrote.