State of Maine v. Daniels

Maine Superior

State of Maine v. Daniels

DecidedFebruary 9, 2005

DocketKENcr-04-239

StatusUnpublished

This text of State of Maine v. Daniels (State of Maine v. Daniels) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Superior Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook

State of Maine v. Daniels, (Me. Super. Ct. 2005).

Pincite

Opinion

STATE OF MAINE ~, SUPERIOR COURT

CRIMINAL ACTION ~ BOCKET NO. CR- 04-239

Sy ine Pe Algfoe

KENNEBEC, ss.

STATE OF MAINE

Vv. "DECISION AND ORDER RICHARD DANIELS, oo

Coa oA

Defendant APR 2. ope

Pending before the court is the defendant’s amended motion to suppress. He has advised the court, through counsel, that the only issue to be addressed through his motion is his claim that the officers executing the search warrant in question failed to follow “knock and announce” procedures. The State has also presented the claim that the defendant lacks standing to object to the warrant’s execution or the seizure of the evidence in question. At the hearing on the motion, the other grounds relied on by the defendant to support his effort to suppress evidence were addressed and decided adversely to him.

As the Law Court has instructed in State v. Reynoso-Hernandez, 2003 ME 19, { 10, 816 A.2d 826, 830, the motion court is to first find the facts concerning the events at issue. It does so as here follows:

On April 8, 2004, six police officers approached a house in Winthrop at 195 Main Street to execute a search warrant at the residence of Stacy Beaulieu. The house was divided into an apartment at the rear leased to Beaulieu and an office in the front retained by the landlord from which he ran his business. A long glass porch ran across the back of the structure behind the office and a short distance along the side where the

Beaulieu apartment door could be found. The house also featured two other doors. One of these was on the street side of the structure and would permit access to the office. The second door was at the side of the house and was the means of ingress to a back porch which was attached to the Beaulieu apartment.

The street side door posted a sign addressed to UPS and FedEx drivers that deliveries should be made to the rear, presumably the back porch.

Four of the officers entered the glassed-in porch through an unlocked glass storm door without knocking or announcing their presence. They were equipped with a ram in case they needed to knock down Beaulieu’s door. When on the porch, they noticed a mailbox for Beaulieu next to her door. They also found a second sign by Beaulieu’s door directing UPS or FedEx deliveries to be made to the rear. There was also a door perpendicular to Beaulieu’s which led to the landlord’s office. Officers Struck, Woodman and Kelly believed the glassed-in porch was a common area.

Peter Struck, a Winthrop Police detective, although in uniform on this date, was among the four officers who entered onto the glassed-in porch. He knocked on the door to the Beaulieu apartment which had Stacy Beaulieu’s name and address on it. While doing so he announced, “Police Department” or “Police, Search Warrant.”

The top part of this door was glass with a curtain on the inside which was either made of transparent material or was arranged so that Struck could see in the apartment. After Struck knocked on this door he could see that someone was coming, apparently in response to his knock. According to Struck, five to seven seconds went by between his knock at the door and the defendant's appearance there. The defendant parted the curtains and looked out before opening the door from the inside. Once the door was

opened, Struck told him they had a search warrant. The defendant was then

handcuffed by Officer Wheeler and seated at a kitchen table. When approaching the Beaulieu apartment, the officers executing the search warrant knew that this was a “knock and announce” warrant, and had planned to wait 20 seconds before forcibly entering the apartment if no one responded to their knock at the door. They never forcibly entered the Beaulieu apartment because the defendant let them in.

While seated at the kitchen table, the defendant told MDEA agent Woodman and Detective Struck that he did not live there and that he was a handyman for Calcagni, the landlord who had an office there. He did not say why he was in the Beaulieu apartment.

Ryan Frost, a captain with the Winthrop Police Department, participated in the execution of the warrant at the Beaulieu apartment. He had spoken to the defendant the day before, April 7, at which time the defendant told him he was living at 41 Vista Heights in Winthrop.

The State claims that this defendant lacks standing to object to the search of the Beaulieu apartment because, apparently, he did not reside there. In support of its position, the State has cited the Supreme Court case of Minnesota v. Carter, 525 US. 83, 119 S.Ct. 469, 142 L.Ed.2d 373 in which that court held that, “a defendant must demonstrate that he personally has an expectation of privacy in the place searched and that his expectation is reasonable . . .” in order to establish standing. Id. 525 U.S. at 88. In Minnesota v. Carter, id., the Supreme Court reaffirmed the principle that a person in a residence, who is not an overnight guest, but is merely present with the consent of the householder, may not claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment. Moreover, if the purpose of the person’s presence is commercial, he is there for a brief period, and there

is a lack of previous connection between the householder and the visiting party, that party will be viewed as simply a permittee on the property who lacks standing because he had no reasonable expectation of privacy where he was found.

The defendant did not testify at the hearing on the motion to suppress, and there was no evidence to rebut the officers’ testimony as to the defendant's purpose for being at the Beaulieu apartment. From this testimony, the court concludes that the defendant did not reside at this apartment because he lived elsewhere in the same town. Accordingly, it is unlikely that he was an overnight guest. Instead, the only inference the court can draw from the scant evidence produced is that the defendant was in the Beaulieu apartment as the landlord’s caretaker. Of necessity that would mean that his presence there was commercial in nature as opposed to a personal visit. It would also suggest that his connection to Beaulieu would be consistent with that of a landlord’s employee to his tenant. In sum, the relationship between the defendant and the Beaulieu residence is so tentative that he must be regarded as a permittee without standing to challenge the search warrant executed there. For this reason, the amended motion may be denied.

Nevertheless, it is worth addressing the defendant's other contention, namely that the warrant at the Beaulieu apartment was executed in violation of knock and announce principles. In this regard, the court understands that the defendant is not and, indeed, cannot be objecting to the officers’ entry into the apartment itself because the door was opened for them after they knocked and announced their presence.

Instead, it appears that the defendant contests the officers’ entry on to the glassed-in porch which led to the apartment. While it is true that they entered this area of the building without knocking and announcing, the court concludes that this was a common area which did not require this procedure before entry. Not only did several

of the officers reasonably believe this to be the case, this porch served as the outside 5

portal to two separate occupancies of the house. One of these was unmistakably Beaulieu’s “front” door, that is, what appeared to be the principal portal to her residence. As with other doors of this type found in multi-unit buildings, it had her name on the door, a mailbox next to it, and a sign addressed to UPS and FedEx drivers to leave packages in the rear.

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