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A police officer who discovers illegal drugs on an individual while taking him to a hospital for an involuntary commitment evaluation is not conducting an illegal search as long as the officer has reason to believe the person is dangerous.
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects people from illegal searches and strictly limits the circumstances in which involuntary searches are allowed. An aggressive and abusive person, however, poses a significant enough risk that a police officer does not violate the subject's rights by looking for something that may harm either the disturbed individual or the officer transporting him or her to a commitment proceeding.
This decision comes in a ruling from a Washington state appeals court that upheld a drug possession conviction after a police officer found methamphetamines on a young man whose parents called the police when their son became physically and verbally abusive to them.
A mentally disturbed Thomas Dempsey called the police twice one morning claiming that "they" were out to kill him. Later, according to a description of the case in the March issue of Forensic Echo, he went to the home of his parents, who called the police after being forced to restrain him from attacking his father.
The officer who answered all the calls, Frank Scalise, said in his report that when he showed up at the parents' home, Thomas Dempsey appeared to be "paranoid, volatile, verbally abusive, and physically aggressive." He decided that the best course was to take Dempsey to a local hospital for an involuntary evaluation of his mental condition. Prior to driving him to the hospital, Scalise searched Dempsey and found a knife and a packet of methamphetamine. He arrested Dempsey for drug possession.
Dempsey attempted to have the drug evidence declared inadmissible because, he claimed, the officer's search was illegal and conducted as a pretext for a routine drug search. He also contended that Scalise's actions exceeded the legal standards for searching a person about to begin civil commitment procedures.
The court found that the search was reasonable, and thus legal, because this was an emergency situation and there was clear evidence that Dempsey posed a risk of harm. It cited Dempsey's own phone calls to the police and his threatening behavior at his parents' house as evidence that the officer had valid reason to conduct a search of his person. When this emergency exception to search restrictions is used, said the court, the search must be to relieve a potentially dangerous crisis situation and not for the purpose of uncovering evidence of a crime.
Robert Ward, a criminal law professor at the New England School of Law in Boston, cautions that the court's ruling should not be interpreted as a license for police officers to assume they can search any person they believe needs to be civilly committed. He pointed out in the Echo that for evidence of a search to be admissible in a later criminal proceeding, courts will expect two standards to be met. "One, there must be a real and immediate danger to the life or safety of another. Two, the officer's purpose must be to render aid or assistance to an endangered person."
The danger, he added, is that "individuals who appear to be mentally ill are taken into custody for their own good," but soon "what began as a medical emergency can almost seamlessly shift into a criminal prosecution."
The critical issue that arises from the Dempsey case, according to Ward, is whether mentally ill individuals understand that when they ask the police for help, their person or home may be searched. A concomitant concern is whether a fear of such searches and possible arrest will keep people who need help from even seeking it out.
[State vs. Dempsey, 947 P.2d 265, Washington App., 1997]