The Legal Intelligencer
December 30, 2020
The Fourth Amendment protects people from unreasonable
government intrusions into their legitimate expectations of privacy. The Fourth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads as follows:
“The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable
cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In Commonwealth v. Edmonds, 586 A.2d 887 (Pa.
1991), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that Article I, Section 8 of the
Pennsylvania Constitution provides greater protection against unreasonable
searches and seizures than the Fourth Amendment.
Article I, Section 8 provides:
“The people shall be secure in their persons, houses,
papers and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures, and no warrant
to search any place or to seize any person or things shall issue without
describing them as nearly as may be, nor without probable cause, supported
by oath or affirmation subscribed to by the affiant.”
With that in mind, it is helpful to understand what
the high court is reviewing in Caniglia v. Strom, No. 20-157, and how
that might impact Pennsylvania jurisprudence.
Although the petitioner raised the Second Amendment
and the underlying facts involve the police entering the petitioner’s home
without a warrant to confiscate his guns—this case is neither about the Second
Amendment or guns—contrary to the media reports immediately after the Supreme
Court granted certiorari.
Edward Caniglia had a disagreement with his wife of 22
years. He grabbed an unloaded gun and placed it on the table where they were
sitting in their Rhode Island home and said “Why don’t you just shoot me and
get me out of my misery.”
His wife left the house. Ultimately she called the
police for a “wellness check.” The police interviewed Caniglia, who had no
criminal record, nor any history of violence, and took him to a local hospital
for evaluation.
He agreed to go along once the police told him they
would not take his two handguns. After he left, the police went into his house
without a warrant and took his guns. The officers asserted the “community
caretaking” exception to enter his home without a search warrant, believing
they were “reasonable to do so based on Caniglia’s state of mind.” They feared
that he could be a danger if guns remained in the home.
Caniglia was release later the same day. He sought the
return of his guns and was denied.
He filed a civil rights claim pursuant to 42 U.S. Code
1983, alleging the police had violated his rights under the Second Amendment,
the Fourth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process and Equal
Protection Clauses.
The federal district court found that community
caretaking “services could be required not only in vehicles, but also in
homes.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agreed.
The U.S. Supreme Court first recognized the community
caretaking exception in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973) involving
officers searching the trunk of a car towed after an accident.
In Cady, the Supreme Court went to special
lengths to be clear that the community caretaking exception only extended to
vehicles. The court acknowledged that, “except in certain carefully defined
classes of cases,” police cannot search private property without consent or a
warrant. It emphasized, however, that “there is a constitutional difference
between houses and cars.”
The court thus held that a “caretaking ‘search’ conducted
… of a vehicle that was neither in the custody nor on the premises of its owner
… was not unreasonable solely because a warrant had not been obtained.”
Since then federal courts of appeal have been divided
on whether the exception applies only to vehicles or can be expanded to homes
as well.
In Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court recognized the
community caretaking exception in Commonwealth v. Livingstone, 174 A.3d
609 (Pa. 2017). The court found “for a seizure to be justified under the public
servant exception to the warrant requirement under the community caretaking
doctrine, the officer must point to specific, objective and articulable facts
which would reasonably suggest to an experienced officer that assistance was
needed; the police action must be independent from the detection,
investigation, and acquisition of criminal evidence … once assistance has been
provided or the peril mitigated, further police action will be evaluated under
traditional Fourth Amendment jurisprudence.”
As recently as this past September the Pennsylvania
Superior Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Schneider, 239 A.3d 161 (Pa.
Super. 2020) that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Livingstone “demonstrates
that the Court did not intend the public servant exception to permit
an officer to enter an individual’s home without a warrant simply to
‘investigate’ if that person needs assistance.”
There is at least a 4-3 split among the federal courts
of appeal on whether the community caretaking exception extends to homes. The
Third Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the “community caretaking”
exception does not apply to searches or seizures from a home. In Ray v.
Township of Warren, 626 F.3d 170 (3d Cir. 2010), police officers entered into a
home after a mother expressed concerns about the safety of her daughter, who
she believed was inside the home. The Third Circuit held that Cady was
“expressly based on the distinction between automobiles and homes,” and
therefore the “community caretaking” exception “cannot be used to justify
warrantless searches of a home.”
There is also division among state appellate courts.
Arizona, California, New Jersey and North Dakota have held that the “community
caretaking” exception does not apply to searches or seizures from a home. On
the other hand, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have reached the opposite
conclusion.
Caniglia’s petition for writ of certiorari argued, “In
the decades since Cady … the so-called ‘community caretaking’
exception has taken on a life of its own.” The U.S. Supreme Court will now
decide whether to pull back the reigns on the community caretaking exception or
further erode the protections of the Fourth Amendment of the
U.S. Constitution and possibly Article I, Section 8 of the Pennsylvania
Constitution.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg,
Garbett, Kelly & George. His weekly column on crime and punishment is
syndicated by Gannett. He is the author of “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010.” You
can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and
follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino).
To visit the column CLICK HERE
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