Lead Opinion
OPINION
This сase presents the question of whether police, having obtained an arrest warrant, are required by the United States Constitution or the Minnesota Constitution to obtain a search warrant to enter a third party’s home to arrest the subject of the arrest warrant. Because we conclude that a search warrant is not required, we affirm.
In 2015, appellant Leona Rose deLottin-ville was arrested and charged by complaint with two felonies: fifth-degree possession of methamphetamine and storing methаmphetamine paraphernalia in the presence of a child. In ordering deLottin-ville’s pretrial release, the district court imposed conditions that she not possess or consume alcoholic beverages or any mood-altering drugs, and that she be subject to random testing. DeLottinville acknowledged that a violation of the conditions of release could result in her arrest. When she failed several random tests, the State applied for an arrest warrant. The district court found probable cause that deLottin-ville had violated the conditions of her release and issued a warrant for her arrest. DeLottinville does not challenge the lawfulness of the arrest warrant.
Five days later, responding to a tip, officers went to the residence of deLottin-
While arresting deLottinville, the officer saw marijuana and a bong on a countertop. There is no dispute that the items were in plain view. Later that day, law enforcement obtained a search warrant for D.R.’s apartment and discovered marijuana, methamphetamine, hydrocodone pills, and drug paraphernalia. The Statе charged de-Lottinville with two counts of fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance, Minn. Stat. § 152.025, subd. 2(a)(1) (2016); and possession of drug paraphernalia, Minn. Stat. § 152.092 (2016).
On a motion to suppress, the district court ruled that deLottinville’s arrest was illegal because the warrant for her arrest did not authorize police to enter D.R.’s apartment. The district court suppressed all fruits of the arrest and dismissed the charges. The court of appeals unanimously reversed, adopting the reasoning of the United States Court of Apрeals for the Eighth Circuit in United States v. Clifford, which held that a guest in a home does not have a greater expectation of privacy than the homeowner under the Fourth Amendment. State v. deLottinville,
I.
When reviewing a pretrial order on a motion to suppress evidence, we review the district court’s factual findings under a clearly erroneous standard and its legal determinations de novo. See State v. Lugo,
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that “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.” U.S. Const. amend. IV. Fourth Amendment rights are “personal” and “may not be vicariously asserted.” Alderman v. United States,
The Supreme Court has not directly addressed the issue in this case, but two of its decisions set the boundaries of the legal analysis. In Payton v. New York,
The question Payton left open was explored, but not answered, in Steagald v. United States,
In a nutshell, Payton describes the Fourth Amendment rights of a homeowner subject to an arrest warrant, while Stedg-ald explains the rights of a homeowner when police execute an arrest wai-rant for a guest. But the Supreme Court has not yet defined the Fourth Amendment rights of those in deLottinville’s position: guests subject to an arrest warrant.
We conclude that Payton sets the ceiling on a guest’s Fourth Amende ment rights. A guest should not receive any greater Fourth Amendment protection when outside her home than when inside it. The home is “first аmong equals” under the Fourth Amendment, representing the “very core” of a person’s constitutional protections. Florida v. Jardines, — U.S. -,
In other words, it is a person’s status as thе subject of the arrest warrant, not whether the person is in her own home or the home of another, that is decisive under Payton’s logic. Here, police lawfully obtained an arrest warrant for deLottinville and entered the home knowing that she wds there, so their entry did not violate her Fourth Amendment rights,
Federal circuit courts almost universally agree. Of the ten circuit courts that have addressed this issue, nine have held that a guest’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated by police entry into another’s home to arrest a guest under a iawful arrest warrant. See Clifford,
The few state supreme courts that have addressed the issue are in accord with the heavy weight of federal authority. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court allowed entry without a search warrant to arrest a guest undеr both the Fourth Amendment and Article 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, echoing federal circuit courts in stating that “[i]t would produce án unacceptable paradox to afford the subject of an arrest warrant greater protection in the home of another than in his or her own home.” Commonwealth v. Tatum,
In deciding that a search warrant is not required to enter a third party’s home, we have not overlooked the argument that such a decision does not fully protect the privacy rights of the homeowner. We understand that a homeowner might well be surprised and distressed to learn that police'may enter at any time to arrest a guest. See Steagald,
But there is no indication in this case of any such abuse; deLottinville was visible to the officer before he entered the home. And the question of what rights the homeowner may have in such a situation is not before us. See Hollis,
DeLottinville argues that the Supreme Court’s decision in Olson,
Unlike in Olson, deLottinville was the subject of an arrest warrant. Olson merely confirms that deLottinville had an expectation of privacy; it says nothing about the
II.
DeLottinville contends that even if the Fourth Amendment does not require suppression, Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution does. We disagree.
The text of Article I, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution mirrors thе Fourth Amendment.
When we interpret Article I, Section 10, we consider the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to be “of persuasive, although not compelling, authority.” In re Welfare of B.R.K.,
On the subject of whether both an arrest warrant and a search warrant are required to enter a third party’s home to arrest a guest, we see no principled basis to apply the Minnesota Constitution to depart from overwhelming federal precedent and unanimous, although limited, state supreme court precedеnt. There is nothing in our constitution’s text or history, or in our state’s case law
Accordingly, we hold that neither the Fourth Amendment nor Article I, Section 10 requires police to obtain a search warrant before entering a home to arrest a guest who is the subject of a lawfully issued arrest warrant.
Affirmed.
Notes
. We have described the language of Article I, Section 10 and the Fourth Amendment as ‘‘textually identical” despite some differenсes in punctuation between the two provisions. State v. McMurray,
. See, e.g., State v. Davis,
.In two cases decided shortly after Steagald, we made conflicting statements—in dicta— about the issue presented in this case. Compare State v. Miller,
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting).
DISSENT
The majority extends the holding of Payton v. New York,
I acknowledge at the outset that the weight of federal authority holds otherwise.
Black-letter law states that, in the absence of exigent circumstances or consent, police must acquire a search warrant to enter a home. Steagald,
If there is sufficient evidence of a citizen’s participation in a felony to persuade a judicial officer that his arrest is justified, it is constitutionally reasonable to require him to open his doors to the officers of the law. Thus, for Fourth Amendment purposes, an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within.
Id. at 602-03,
The holding in Payton makes sense because the first and most likely place to find the subject of an arrest warrant is in her home. See United States v. Underwood,
The central holding of Steagald is that a search warrant is required to protect the privacy rights of a home’s resident, even if police have an arrest warrant for the resident’s guest.
The majority distinguishes Steagald, stating that deLottinville cannot vicariously assert the privacy rights of her host. See, e.g., Alderman v. United States,
In Olson, the Court held that the defendant’s status as an overnight guest provid
The Court’s reasoning in Olson and Carter shows that the guest’s reasonable expectation of privacy flows from the Fourth Amendment rights of the host. See Carter,
The host’s constitutional right to privacy is meaningless if it cannot prevent unwarranted intrusions into the home. The Fourth Amendment is “ ‘designed to prevent, not simply to redress, unlawful police action.’ ” Steagald,
[sjince police who enter a dwelling to effect an arrest presumably are searching for the subject, not for evidence that may incriminate others who may live there, they will have little, if any, incentive to- obtain a search warrant -if the suspect cannot-.challenge the entry. On the other hand, the owner of the home will not have occasion to. challenge an unlawful - entry except in the unusual case, where the police-come upon plain-view evidence that incriminates the owner.
If suppression motions and damages actions were sufficient to implement the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, there would be no need for the constitutional requirement that in the absence of exigent circumstances a warrant must be obtained for a home arrest or a search of a home for objects. We have instead concluded that in such cases the participation of a detached magistrate in the probable-cause determination is an essential element of a reasonable search or seizure.
The majority, to its credit, acknowledges that today’s decision creates a potential for abuse. This potential for abuse is not merely theoretical; in Steagald, the Court noted an extreme example in which police used two arrest warrants as authority to search 300 homes.
For these reasons, I conclude that de-Lottinville was entitled to a finding by a neutral magistrate of probable cause to believe that she was inside the home. This requirement would protect the privacy interests of unwitting hosts in their homes, and it would not unduly burden law enforcement officials. As the Steagald court noted, the inconvenience of obtaining a search warrant “does not increase significantly when an outstanding arrest warrant already exists.”
In conclusion, I agree with Justice Ginsburg that “people are not genuinely ‘secure in their ... houses ... against unreasonable searches and seizures,’ U.S. Const. Arndt. 4, if their invitations to others increase the risk of unwarranted governmental peering and prying into their dwelling places,” Carter,
. As the dissent in Commonwealth v. Tatum notes: "This view ... is not without its critics.”
In addition, key federal circuit cases on this issue were decided well before Minnesota v. Olson determined that overnight guеsts have an expectation of privacy in their host’s homes. See United States v. Buckner,
. The majority asserts that Olson merely established that an overnight guest has a reasonable expectation of privacy and does not consider the effect of an arrest warrant for the guest. Although the search in Olson was conducted without any warrant, this factual distinction does not authorize the court to ignore the essential finding that a host may share his reasonable expectation of privacy with a guest. See Olson,
. Still, five justices agreed in Carter thаt "as a general rule, social guests will have an expectation of privacy in their host's home.” Carter,
. See Thomas Y. Davies, The Supreme Court Giveth and the Supreme Court Taketh Away: The Century of Fourth Amendment "Search and Seizure” Doctrine, 100 J. Crim, L. & Criminology 933, 1030 (2010) (“The Burger Court majority effectively barred use of injunctions to enforce Fourth Amendment restraints. The Rehnquist Court majority also effectively barred enforcement through damage lawsuits brought against state or local officers under § 1983 or against federal officers under the parallel Bivens doctrine. In particular, Justice Scalia’s 1987 majority opinion in Anderson v. Creighton made it virtually impossible for a plaintiff to overcome the qualified immunity defense ... if issues involving flexible standards or fact-based issues such as probable cause or reasonableness were involved—as they typically are in search and seizure cases.” (footnotes omitted)).
. Consider, for example, grandparents who invite their college-aged grandson and several of his friends to stay for Thanksgiving. The grandparents and the grandson do not know that one оf his friends has an outstanding arrest warrant, but a third person alerts the police that the suspect is present in the grandparents' home. Under the majority's holding, by authority of an arrest warrant only, the police may enter the grandparents’ home without knocking, even during Thanksgiving dinner.
. Because I conclude that the Fourth Amendment affords overnight guests the protection of a search warrant before police officers may enter the home of a third-party to arrest them, I do not address deLottinville’s alternative argument invoking the protections of Minnesota's Constitution.
