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FOR IMMEDIATE NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE # 25

FROM: CLERK OF SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA

The Opinions handed down on the 11th day of April, 2007 , are as follows:

BY CALOGERO, C.J.:

2006-KK-1045

STATE OF LOUISIANA v. KEITH WALKER (Parish of Orleans) For the reasons set forth above, the district court ruling granting the defendant's motion to suppress is vacated and the case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings. DISTRICT COURT JUDGMENT VACATED; CASE REMANDED TO THE DISTRICT COURT JOHNSON, J., dissents and assigns reasons.

04/11/07 SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA No. 2006-KK-1045 STATE OF LOUISIANA VERSUS KEITH WALKER ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEAL FOURTH CIRCUIT, PARISH OF ORLEANS CALOGERO, Chief Justice In a single bill of information, the defendant Keith Walker is charged with possession of heroin with intent to distribute, a violation of La. Rev. Stat. 40:966(A)(1), and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, a violation of La. Rev. Stat. 40:966(A)(2). The defendant moved to suppress the evidence and, after conducting a hearing on August 26, 2005, the district court granted the motion. The state sought review in the court of appeal which found no error in the trial court's ruling. State v. Walker, 06-0411 (La. App. 4 Cir. 4/25/06). We granted the state's writ application to determine whether the conduct of the police leading to the seizure of the contraband, i.e., the officer's following the defendant into a third party's residence to effect an investigatory stop, did not require a warrant and was otherwise entirely reasonable. State v. Walker, 06-1045 (La. 6/23/06), 930 So.2d 989. For the reasons set forth below, we vacate the district court's ruling granting the motion to suppress and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings. DISCUSSION The circumstances surrounding recovery of the evidence in the present case are straightforward. On the afternoon of March 9, 2005, three units of the New Orleans Police Department conducting a proactive "stacked patrol" of the Hollygrove area

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entered the 3400 block of General Ogden Street. From their vantage point in the lead vehicle, Officers Schnapp and O'Brien spotted the defendant and another man standing directly in front of the residence located at 3428 General Ogden. Officer Schnapp testified at the hearing on the motion to suppress that the defendant had his back to the street "and was displaying an object or objects to the second black male who was facing him, that is his arms were bent at the elbow and his palms were facing up." When the two men observed the approaching police unit, they separated. As the other man walked away, the defendant tucked his opened hand into his pants pocket and entered the front yard of 3428 General Ogden through an open fence, heading for a center stairway which provided access to the porch of the residence. The officers exited their patrol unit and asked the defendant to stop. The defendant instead walked up the stairs, pushed his way past an African-American woman standing at the doorway of the residence, and went inside. Officer Schnapp also walked past the woman in the doorway and into the residence. As he entered, the officer saw the defendant remove a yellow object from his pants pocket and walk through the front room of the residence into the kitchen, which also served as a laundry room containing a washer and dryer. The defendant discarded the object behind the dryer and then surrendered to the police. After handing defendant over to his partner, Officer Schnapp reached behind the dryer and retrieved a single plastic baggie containing eighteen foils of heroin and fifteen yellow bags of marijuana. The officer then spoke to the woman in the doorway who informed him that she knew the defendant "from the neighborhood but he was not allowed in her residence." The defendant made no statements to the officers on the scene but indicated at booking that he lived in the 3400 block of Hollygrove Street, an address around the corner from 3428 General Ogden.

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Officer Schnapp testified at the suppression hearing that he decided to act based on his observation that the defendant held something in his hand as he stood outside the premises of 3428 General Ogden talking with the unidentified man and that "when he saw us[,] he began to move." Based on his seventeen years of experience in the field, Officer Schnapp concluded that he and his partner had interrupted a narcotics transaction. At the same time, the officer acknowledged that he did not hear what, if anything, the defendant may have said to the woman at 3428 General Ogden when he pushed past her through the front door. The officer further acknowledged that he said nothing to the woman before he followed the defendant into the home, that he did not know the residence belonged to someone else until after he retrieved the contraband discarded behind the clothes dryer and placed the defendant under arrest, and that he did not see what the defendant held in his hand until he followed his suspect across the threshold of the residence. At the close of the suppression hearing, the district court agreed with the state that Officer Schnapp and his partner had formulated reasonable suspicion for an investigatory detention when they first directed the defendant to stop outside the residence at 3428 General Ogden.1 However, the district court ultimately found that, while Officer Schnapp had engaged in good police work, he lacked both probable cause to believe that the defendant had actual possession of any drugs before he
In brief, as he did at the hearing, the defendant asserts there was an insufficient basis for a reasonable belief under La. Code Crim. Proc. art. 215.1 that the defendant had been involved in criminal activity. Essentially questioning the officer's credibility, the defendant contends the officer told differing stories with regard to the drug transaction: one that involved a perceived transaction with a black man and another that involved a perceived transaction with two white men in a black pick-up truck. Officer Schnapp explained at the hearing that the black truck was stopped by other officers and that, though he had included that detail in the gist of his police report, he had neglected to include it in the narrative portion. He explained that all four persons were at the scene and that the defendant and the black man may have been intending to "service" the potential buyers in the black truck. Before concluding there was a reasonable basis for stopping the defendant, the district court specifically found the officer's testimony to be credible, noting that the officer could have simply lied rather than say he had seen no actual contraband during the transaction, and dismissed the omission in the report as simply a mistake. We find no abuse of discretion in that determination. 3
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entered the home and exigent circumstances for crossing the threshold of the premises without a warrant, i.e., that there was a reasonable probability that inside the residence the defendant would destroy any contraband. "I think what the officer did was reasonable," the district court observed, "but the question is, [wa]s it legal? . . . Can you run into somebody else's house after somebody and you don't know if he in fact does have drugs on him?" Although the district court reached the wrong result under the particular facts of this case, it began with the correct legal premise. The Fourth Amendment applies "'to all invasions on the part of the government and its employ[e]es of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life.'" Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 1379, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980)(quoting Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630, 6 S.Ct. 524, 532, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886)). Because the "'physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed,'" Payton, 445 U.S. at 585-86, 100 S.Ct. at 1379-80 (quoting United States v. United States Dist. Court (Plamondon), 407 U.S. 297, 313, 92 S.Ct. 2125, 2134, 32 L.Ed.2d 752 (1972)), absent exigent circumstances or some other well-recognized exception such as consent, the police must obtain a warrant before they enter the home to conduct a search or to seize a person and thereby intrude on an individual's reasonable and legitimate expectation of privacy. Payton, 445 U.S. at 599-602, 100 S.Ct. at 1387-88; see also Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 101 S.Ct. 1642, 68 L.Ed.2d 38 (1981)(absent consent or exigent circumstances, a search warrant is required to enter the home of a third party to arrest an individual; thus, any evidence seized without a search warrant is inadmissible against the third party). La. Const. art. 1,

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