OH7: Defendant was pushed for consent, so it’s involuntary; officers’ impending lunch break not exigent circumstances

Defendant was a college student suspected of setting off a small homemade bomb/firework in a vacant lot. He was stopped leaving the scene, and detained. Nothing illegal was found on him or in his car. The officers wanted to search his house, and they obtained consent which the trial court found to be involuntary because “the officers pushed for him to give consent to search his home. … Assuming without deciding that consent to search the vehicle was voluntarily given and reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, consent to search the vehicle did not give the officers carte blanche to continue to detain Fasline until they got him to consent to the search.” Exigent circumstances doesn’t support the search of the house either. The excuse the police gave in pushing for consent was that their lunch break was coming up and they wanted to get it over with. That’s not exigency. State v. Fasline, 2014-Ohio-1470, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS 1405 (7th Dist. March 31, 2014).

Defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging the search incident to defendant’s arrest because it was reasonable. Defendant was stopped for a traffic offense and his DL came back suspended. That justified his custodial arrest, and a search of his person turned up ecstacy. It was valid, so defense counsel can’t be ineffective. State v. Morton, 2014-Ohio-1434, 2014 Ohio App. LEXIS 1351 (8th Dist. April 3, 2014).*