{"id":5942,"date":"2011-12-28T11:20:34","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T11:00:26","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T11:00:26","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5942","title":{"rendered":"ND: Consent to search room with guns pointed at defendant was not voluntary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officers came to defendant\u2019s motel room door and demanded entry. He opened the door to drawn weapons. There were no exigent circumstances, and his consent on the totality was involuntary. State v. Pederson<\/a>, 2011 ND 155, 801 N.W.2d 723 (2011):<\/p>\n

[*P12] However, there is insufficient evidence to support the district court’s determination that Pederson voluntarily consented to the officers’ entry. There was evidence there were four officers at the motel room door with their weapons drawn, they yelled and ordered the room occupants to come out with their hands up, Pederson came out of the bathroom with his hands up, and the officers asked if they could come into the room before ordering Pederson to the ground. Generally, courts have held consent is not voluntarily given when officers have their weapons drawn at the individual’s door, unless there are other indications the consent was voluntary. … Although the district court found there were legitimate safety concerns justifying the officers\u2019 use of weapons, that fact is not relevant in deciding whether Pederson\u2019s consent was voluntary. To determine whether consent is voluntary the court must consider the totality of the circumstances, including the condition of the accused at the time he gave consent. … The officers; motivations for having their weapons drawn and pointed at Pederson were not known to Pederson when he gave consent to enter.<\/p>\n

[*P13] Considering the totality of the circumstances, we conclude the district court’s decision that Pederson voluntarily consented to the officers’ entry into his motel room is contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence. The State did not argue the entry was justified by exigent circumstances or any other exception to the warrant requirement. … We conclude the officers unlawfully entered the motel room and arrested Pederson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only real question here is why the trial court found the consent voluntary ….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}