FATHER CONVICTED ON WEAPONS CHARGES AFTER POLICE RETURN HIS LOST DAUGHTER

A cab driver saw a four year old girl wandering along a street without any apparent supervision. He called the police and Officer Anthony Ratliff arrived. After taking custody of the child, he asked her where she lived. She pointed to a nearby house. The door was open. He knocked on the door. No one answered. He followed the child in the house, calling out to see if anyone was home. In a bedroom in the back of the house the officer found a man who appeared to waking up. The man said he was the child’s father but he did not have any ID.

He gave a false name and a birthdate. After backup officers arrived Ratliff went out to his car and checked the name on a computer and found nothing.

Ratliff noticed a bag of bullets in the room. He searched the room and found a gun under the mattress. A computer search, conducted after Ratliff got Taylor’s name in a telephone conversation with the child’s mother indicated that Taylor was a convicted felon and Ratliff arrested Taylor for being a felon in possession of a gun.

Taylor’s motion to suppress the evidence was denied and he appealed.

He claimed the search was illegal in that it was performed without probable cause that a crime was committed and without a search warrant. It is true that for most searches of a residence a warrant is necessary. But Ratliff was not investigating a crime. He was trying to return a child to her parents. The Fourth Amendment does not require a warrant in all cases. But it requires that searches be reasonable and it was certainly reasonable for Ratliff to go into the house to look for the child’s parents. Likewise the search of the house looking for a parent was reasonable. Both the entrance into the house and the search for a parent are permitted under the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant clause.

The appeal was denied. The court justified the entry into the building, the search for Taylor and the search of his room under the exigent circumstances exception.

But where I part from the Court is in the search under the mattress for the gun. There is no law requiring an individual to have identification and any law that so requires identification, other than while driving, violates the Constitution. Thus he had not committed any crime allowing the officers to search the room. Without knowing more there is no law against the possession of bullets. So finding the bag of bullets did not give the officers probable cause that a crime occurred. If the gun was under the mattress and Taylor was on top of the mattress, he could not get the gun and the officers were not endangered. There was no reason to search under the mattress and the search did not further the goal of finding the child’s parents. Even knowing Taylor’s name did not prove or disprove that he was the father. If the police had any doubt and there was no reason for them to have doubts they could ask for pictures, to see the child’s bedroom, or to talk to the child’s mother. But knowing his name was immaterial and searching the room violated Taylor’s Fourth Amendment rights.