Summary
The Connecticut Supreme Court considers whether police violated the defendant’s rights under the Fourth Amendment and the Connecticut Constitution by conducting a warrantless protective sweep of his apartment after arresting him outside the apartment. The court holds that the apartment was not immediately adjoining the arrest location and that the officers lacked specific and articulable facts supporting a reasonable belief that a dangerous third party was inside. The judgment of conviction was reversed.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Maryland v. Buie permits a protective sweep of a residence when the defendant is arrested outside the residence and without an arrest warrant.
- Whether the warrantless entry into and search of the defendant's apartment was justified as a first-tier or second-tier protective sweep under Buie.
- Whether the narcotics and drug paraphernalia discovered during the unconstitutional search must be suppressed under the exclusionary rule.
Holdings
- Buie's protective-sweep framework is not categorically limited to arrests conducted inside the home or arrests made pursuant to an arrest warrant. A protective sweep incident to an arrest just outside a home may be reasonable if the applicable Buie requirements are satisfied.
- The defendant's second-floor apartment was not a space immediately adjoining the place of arrest and therefore could not be searched under Buie's first-tier protective-sweep rule.
- The warrantless search was not a valid second-tier protective sweep because the officers lacked specific and articulable facts, together with rational inferences, supporting a reasonable belief that a dangerous third party was inside the apartment.
- The crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia discovered in the apartment were fruits of the unconstitutional warrantless search and had to be suppressed.
Key quotations
“Beyond that ... we hold that there must be articulable facts which, taken together with the rational inferences from those facts, would warrant a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the arrest scene.” (at 588)
“Lack of information [concerning the presence of a third party] cannot provide an articulable basis upon which to justify a protective sweep.” (at 594)
“The officers' lack of information “cannot be an articulable basis for a sweep that requires information to justify it in the first place.”” (at 598)
Factual background
Police intercepted a Federal Express parcel containing approximately twenty-seven pounds of marijuana addressed to a fictitious recipient at the defendant's Stamford residence and conducted a controlled delivery. After the defendant accepted the parcel, officers arrested him in a first-floor common hallway and saw that the door to his second-floor apartment was ajar. Without a warrant, officers entered the apartment to perform a purported protective sweep and observed crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia in plain view. The officers had no specific information that an armed or dangerous person was inside the apartment, and the defendant's silence in response to questions about whether anyone else was present was the principal circumstance relied upon to justify the sweep.
Procedural history
Police conducted a warrantless protective sweep of the defendant's apartment after arresting him in a first-floor common hallway following a controlled delivery of marijuana. The trial court denied the defendant's motion to suppress crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia observed in the apartment, and the jury convicted him of possession of narcotics while acquitting him of possession of marijuana with intent to sell. The Supreme Court transferred the appeal and reversed, directing the trial court to grant the suppression motion.
Remand instructions
The case was remanded to the trial court with direction to grant the defendant's motion to suppress.