Mincey v. Arizona

437 U.S. 385 (1978)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Police went to Mincey's (D) apartment to make an arrest. Officer Headricks had allegedly arranged to purchase a quantity of heroin from D and had left, ostensibly to obtain money. On his return, he was accompanied by nine other plainclothes policemen and a deputy county attorney. The door was opened by John Hodgman, one of three acquaintances of D who were in the living room of the apartment. Officer Headricks slipped inside and moved quickly into the bedroom. As the rest of the police entered the apartment, a rapid volley of shots was heard from the bedroom. Officer Headricks emerged and collapsed on the floor. After the shooting, the narcotics agents, thinking that other persons in the apartment might have been injured, looked about quickly for other victims. They found a young woman wounded in the bedroom closet and D apparently unconscious in the bedroom. Emergency assistance was requested, and some medical aid was administered to Officer Headricks. The agents refrained from further investigation, pursuant to a Tucson Police Department directive that police officers should not investigate incidents in which they are involved. They neither searched further nor seized any evidence; they merely guarded the suspects and the premises. Homicide detectives arrived and took charge of the investigation. They supervised the removal of Officer Headricks and the suspects, trying to make sure that the scene was disturbed as little as possible, and then proceeded to gather evidence. Officer Headricks died a few hours later in the hospital. Their search lasted four days, 3 during which period the entire apartment was searched, photographed, and diagrammed. The officers opened drawers, closets, and cupboards, and inspected their contents; they emptied clothing pockets; they dug bullet fragments out of the walls and floors; they pulled up sections of the carpet and removed them for examination. Every item in the apartment was closely examined and inventoried, and 200 to 300 objects were seized. No warrant was ever obtained. D's pretrial motion to suppress the fruits of this search was denied after a hearing. Much of the evidence introduced against him at trial (including photographs and diagrams, bullets and shell casings, guns, narcotics, and narcotics paraphernalia) was the product of the four-day search of his apartment. On appeal, the Arizona Supreme Court reaffirmed previous decisions in which it had held that the warrantless search of the scene of a homicide is constitutionally permissible. Because the investigating homicide detectives knew that Officer Headricks was seriously injured, began the search promptly upon their arrival at the apartment, and searched only for evidence either establishing the circumstances of death or 'relevant to motive and intent or knowledge the court found that the warrantless search of the petitioner's apartment had not violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. D was indicted for murder, assault, and three counts of narcotics offenses. He was tried at a single trial and convicted on all the charges. D contended that evidence used against him had been unlawfully seized from his apartment without a warrant and that statements used to impeach his credibility were inadmissible because they had not been made voluntarily. The Arizona Supreme Court reversed the murder and assault convictions on state-law grounds but affirmed the narcotics convictions. It held that the warrantless search of a homicide scene is permissible under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments and that D's statements were voluntary.