Does the Age of Footprints in the Snow Justify a Search of a Hou
Developments in Vermont Law
Does the Age of Footprints in the Snow Justify a Search of a House
By Kimberly B. Cheney
Early one March morning, the 911 operator got a call from a person saying he was Stephen Ford; he’d had a car accident in Quechee, and was trapped inside. A police visit to the scene and found no wrecked car and no Stephen Ford. State Police protocol requires a visit to a missing person’s last known residence, which was in Williamstown, approximately 40 miles away.The trooper arrived there at about 6:00 a.m.There were no fresh car tracks in the snow, no light on in the house. There were footprints leading to the basement door.The trooper’s testimony did not specify how recently the prints were made.Nevertheless the trial court inferred that the trooper believed they were recent enough to have occurred between the time of the 911 call and the trooper’s arrival.Knocking on that door got no response. The trooper went to the back of the house, and saw a basement light.It turned out to be a grow light over some marijuana plants. The trooper got a search warrant, found the plants and learned that Justin Ford, but not Stephen, lived in the house. Justin moved to suppress the search because the trooper had no right to peek in the window. The trial court disagreed. Justin was convicted of possession of marijuana and narcotics.He appealed to the supreme court
Justices Skoglund, Johnson, and Dooley decided the search was unconstitutional and voided the convictions. They ruled the trooper’s peering into the rear window of the house was a warrantless search which violated the Vermont constitution, which gives people the right to be free from unreasonable government intrusions into expectations of privacy. Warrantless search of home can occur if two factors are present: (1) the police must have reasonable grounds to believe there is an emergency which requires immediate need for assistance, and (2) any search that occurs must be associated with the place giving rise to the emergency. The silent, dark, snowbound house, with footprints of an undetermined age leading to the back door,gave no reason to think a person injured 40 miles away would be inside who needed emergency help, and peering into the basement window without any reason to think someone was inside was unreasonable. There was no connection between the purported accident and the house.
Chief Justice Reiber and Justice Burgess dissented. Although recognizing this was a close case, they were unwilling to curtail police authority to look for a potentially injured person who might need help.The 911 call by an identified person was sufficient to establish an emergency, and reasonably triggered the police protocol to go the last know residence of the person.It is wrong to review the trooper’s judgment in the light of hindsight. Someone could have been incapacitated inside the house. As to the footprints, in Vermont, they wrote, where there is regular snowfall, the trial judge was reasonable to infer the trooper knew fresh prints from old ones and didn’t have to say so directly. In essence, they ruled, police should be given the benefit of the doubt when the search was to help someone potentially in distress, and was not done to prove a crime.
This is a carefully reasoned opinion safeguarding privacy rights, with a thoughtful dissent. If the officer had testified the footprints could have been made between the 911 call and the search, the result would be different. Was this an oversight or a deliberate silence?State v. Justin Ford 2010 VT 39
