Police received a call to a shooting, and people at the scene were shouting “Officer Shaffer pulled into the driveway and blocked the car so that it could not leave. The driver of the car stopped, got out, and yelled to Officer Shaffer, ‘He’s inside! He’s inside!’ At the same time, two more men ran out of the house yelling, ‘Inside! He’s inside!’ Officer Shaffer detained all three men in the carport of the home until a backup officer arrived.” Crime scene investigators were right behind the police. The crime scene search was reasonable under Mincey because the crime scene people were right there. State v. Hutchison, 2016 Tenn. LEXIS 83 (Feb. 5, 2016):
In this case, the Court of Criminal Appeals relied heavily on Coulter and held that “the entry of officers arriving subsequent to Officer Shaffer was a continuation of his original entry.” Hutchison, 2014 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 346, 2014 WL 1423240, at *16-17. It noted: “[A]ll of the officers, detectives, and crime scene technicians were essentially responding at the same time. Officer Shaffer only arrived as quickly as he did because he was already in the area.” 2014 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 346, [WL] at *17. The majority of the evidence, the Court of Criminal Appeals held, was in plain view, and its admission into evidence did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id.
Courts in other jurisdictions have held in accord. In State v. O’Donnell, New Jersey’s intermediate appellate court considered “whether evidence observed in plain view during a police entry into a residence to provide emergency aid may be seized without a warrant even though there is a short delay between the emergency aid entry and the seizure of evidence by other police officers responsible for processing the crime scene.” State v. O’Donnell, 408 N.J. Super. 177, 974 A.2d 420, 421 (N.J. App. Div. 2009), aff’d, 203 N.J. 160, 1 A.3d 604 (2010). In that case, police responded to a call about an unconscious child. They arrived to find the child dead and the mother sitting on a couch with blood on her hands, rambling incoherently. Id. Several officers had responded to the initial call; some took the mother into custody and others remained to secure the home. Id. at 422. About forty minutes later, before the child’s body had been removed, investigators arrived and seized evidence, including various medications lying about in the home. Id. After the trial judge refused to suppress the evidence seized at the home, the defendant mother pled guilty and reserved for appeal the question of the admissibility of the evidence seized after officers responded to the initial call. Id. at 423.
Considering the issue, the New Jersey court in O’Donnell first noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 98 S. Ct. 1942, 56 L. Ed. 2d 486 (1978), in which firefighters put out a fire during the night and then returned four hours later, when it became light, to complete their investigation. O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 424. O’Donnell observed that the Tyler Court held that the evidence seized by fire investigators in the morning investigation was not seized in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights, explaining that “the morning entries were no more than an actual continuation of the first, and the lack of a warrant thus did not invalidate the resulting seizure of evidence.” O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 424 (quoting Tyler, 436 U.S. at 511).
The O’Donnell court then discussed the Supreme Court’s decision in Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 98 S. Ct. 2408, 57 L. Ed. 2d 290 (1978). O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 424-25. In Mincey, a police officer was killed while trying to arrest a drug dealer. Mincey, 437 U.S. at 387. After the crime, police officers “conducted a four-day search of the entire apartment, which included opening drawers, closets and cupboards and inspecting their contents, emptying clothing pockets, and pulling up sections of carpet and removing them for examination,” all without a warrant. Id. at 389. The Mincey Court rejected a blanket “murder scene” exception to the warrant requirement but reaffirmed the emergency aid exception and remanded the case to the Arizona Supreme Court to determine the extent to which evidence was seized within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 392-93. On remand, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the admissibility of the evidence in plain view of the homicide detective who responded to the scene ten minutes after the murder. Arizona v. Mincey, 130 Ariz. 389, 636 P.2d 637, 648-51 (Ariz. 1981). The Arizona high court concluded that the homicide detective’s entry into the apartment “was merely a continuation of the initial emergency entry” by other police officers in response to the shooting, so the homicide detective “could make plain view seizures … of evidence he observed in plain view.” Id. at 649. The O’Donnell court observed that the U.S. Supreme Court denied the defendant’s petition for a writ of certiorari to review the Arizona Supreme Court’s decision. O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 425 (citing Mincey v. Arizona, 455 U.S. 1003, 102 S. Ct. 1638, 71 L. Ed. 2d 871 (1982)).
The New Jersey court in O’Donnell then summarized:
Consistent with the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision in Michigan v. Tyler and the Arizona’s Supreme Court’s decision on remand in Mincey, the courts in other states have upheld the validity of seizures of evidence observed in plain view at a crime scene to which the police responded under the emergency aid exception, even when there is some delay between the plain view observation and seizure of the evidence and the seizure is made by different police officers than the ones who initially responded to the emergency.
O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 425-26 (citing State v. Spears, 560 So. 2d 1145, 1147-51 (Ala. Crim. App.1989), cert. denied, 1990 Ala. LEXIS 310 (Ala. 1990); Wofford v. State, 330 Ark. 8, 952 S.W.2d 646, 652-54 (Ark. 1997); State v. Magnano, 528 A.2d at 760 at (Conn. 1987); Allen v. State, 638 So. 2d 577, 578-80 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1994), rev. denied, 649 So. 2d 232 (Fla. 1994); State v. Johnson, 413 A.2d 931, 932-34 (Me. 1980); Wengert v. State, 364 Md. 76, 771 A.2d 389, 394-401 (Md. 2001); Smith v. State, 419 So.2d 563, 568-74 (Miss. 1982), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1047, 103 S. Ct. 1449, 103 S. Ct. 1450, 75 L. Ed. 2d 803, 75 L. Ed. 2d 804 (1983); State v. Tidwell, 888 S.W.2d 736, 740-43 (Mo. Ct. App. 1994); State v. Jolley, 312 N.C. 296, 321 S.E.2d 883, 886-88 (N.C. 1984); State v. Anderson, 42 Ore. App. 29, 599 P.2d 1225, 1228-30 (Or. Ct. App. 1979), cert. denied, 446 U.S. 920, 100 S. Ct. 1857, 64 L. Ed. 2d 275 (1980); State v. Martin, 274 N.W.2d 893, 896-97 (S.D. 1979); Coulter, 67 S.W.3d at 42-45; Hunter v. Commonwealth, 8 Va. App. 81, 378 S.E.2d 634, 635-36, 5 Va. Law Rep. 2115 (Va. Ct. App. 1989); La Fournier v. State, 91 Wis. 2d 61, 280 N.W.2d 746, 748-51 (Wis. 1979)).
