Help! I Need Somebody (or Do I?): A Discussion of Community Caretaking and 'Assistance Seizures' Under Iowa Law

Help! I Need Somebody (or Do I?): A Discussion of Community Caretaking and “Assistance Seizures” Under Iowa Law John W. Sturgis VII  ABSTRACT: Police officers often engage in activity that extends beyond their role as criminal investigators. Whether helping with a flat tire or providing directions, police officers serve as “community caretakers” by providing aid to individuals and the general public. Some police community caretaking activities, however, are more invasive than others and constitute searches or seizures under the Fourth Amendment. Predominantly, state courts evaluate the reasonableness of these activities under the community caretaking doctrine. The formulation and application of this doctrine is far from uniform. In State v. Kurth , the Iowa Supreme Court suggested its willingness to address the community caretaking doctrine under article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution, which is identical to the Fourth Amendment in content. This Note argues that the court should reevaluate its treatment of a specific type of community caretaking activity, the “assistance seizure,” which occurs when an officer stops a vehicle (therefore “seizing” it) for the purpose of providing aid. This Note proposes two modifications to Iowa’s existing jurisprudence for determining the reasonableness of assistance seizures. First, the court should adopt a requirement that an officer act with subjective good faith in providing aid, and that his actions be objectively reasonable. Second, it should adopt the view that seizures performed to help the subject of the seizure, as opposed to the general public, are presumptively unreasonable.  J.D. Candidate, The University of Iowa College of Law, 2014; B.A., The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2011. To my parents, friends, and Kelsey. 1842 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 99:1841 I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 1843 II. COMMUNITY CARETAKING: INCEPTION AND EVOLUTION .................... 1848 A. E NTER C OMMUNITY C ARETAKING : CADY V. DOMBROWSKI .............. 1848 B. D EFINING R EASONABLENESS IN THE C ONTEXT OF C OMMUNITY C ARETAKING : B ALANCING T ESTS AND E MERGENCY L IMITATIONS ..... 1849 1. State v. Anderson : Balancing to Derive Reasonableness ...... 1850 2. People v. Mitchell : Limiting Community Caretaking to Emergency Situations .......................................................... 1852 III. ANALYZING COMMUNITY CARETAKING: ASSISTANCE SEIZURES ............ 1854 A. S ORTING C OMMUNITY C ARETAKING A CTIVITIES : I DENTIFYING T HIRD - AND F IRST -P ARTY A SSISTANCE S EIZURES .............................. 1854 B. C URRENT I OWA L AW R EGARDING C OMMUNITY C ARETAKING : A F OCUS ON A SSISTANCE S EIZURES .................................................. 1856 1. Kurth and Crawford : Adoption of the Anderson Test ........... 1857 2. Special Concurrence: An Open Question Regarding Assistance Seizures Under the Iowa Constitution .............. 1861 IV. CRITICISMS OF THE M ITCHELL AND A NDERSON TESTS .......................... 1862 A. E VALUATION OF THE MITCHELL T EST ............................................ 1863 B. E VALUATION OF THE ANDERSON T EST ............................................ 1864 1. Fourth Amendment Seizure ................................................ 1864 2. Bona Fide Community Caretaker Activity .......................... 1865 3. Balancing Individual and Governmental Interests ............ 1868 a. Evaluation of Provo City v. Warden ............................... 1868 b. Adherence to the First- and Third-Party Distinction ............ 1869 V. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 1873 2014] HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY (OR DO I?) 1843 I. INTRODUCTION “My independence seems to vanish in the haze.” —The Beatles 1 Butterbaugh—the devout follower of Bacchus, the local drunkard—is back to his old tricks. Consider the following: 2 In the wee hours of the morning, police received a call from a woman in a disconcerted state. The source of her anxiety, it seemed, was Butterbaugh. Somewhat frantically, she explained that Butterbaugh had taken some pills at her apartment and passed out. Now, several hours later, he had “come to” and was shouting and throwing his body about aggressively. Fleshy impacts and the occasional bellow could be heard in the background. Butterbaugh found the phone conversation incomprehensible. In colloquial terms, he was “dazed and confused.” He did not know where he was, what he was doing, or whom he was doing it with. He wanted—no, he needed—a bastion of rationality. “A police officer should take me home,” Butterbaugh requested to anyone listening (he had forgotten about the woman on the phone). Instead, and against his better judgment, Butterbaugh left the apartment and got into a dark Ford pickup. As one might expect, this was not the first time Butterbaugh caused such a ruckus. In fact, Officer Ellis had dealt with Butterbaugh more times than he could remember. A wry smile formed on his lips as he listened to the report from dispatch, remembering some of the more amusing incidents. As far as Ellis knew, Butterbaugh was not a troublemaker—he was simply a man keen on finding trouble. En route to the caller’s apartment, Ellis noticed a vehicle matching the description of the one allegedly driven by Butterbaugh. The vehicle was complying with traffic laws and dispatch had not indicated to Ellis that Butterbaugh had committed a crime. Ellis swirled the police cruiser’s overhead lights and stopped the vehicle. As Ellis approached the driver’s side window, he scanned the occupants of the truck with his flashlight. Butterbaugh was riding shotgun. Officer Ellis did not know the driver, and the driver, Crawford, did not know the officer. Ellis explained that he received a call about Butterbaugh being in trouble and that he performed the stop to ensure everything was all right. “Sit tight while I radio dispatch,” Ellis said. Crawford did not like this command. Perhaps he did not like police officers, or perhaps he wanted to explain himself. Whatever the case, Crawford exited the vehicle and approached Ellis. Crawford started speaking 1. THE BEATLES, Help! , on HELP! (EMI Studios 1965). 2. State v. Crawford, 659 N.W.2d 537, 53940 (Iowa 2003), serves as the factual basis for this thought experiment, with which the author has taken dramatic liberties. 1844 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 99:1841 before Ellis could respond, and his words carried a pungent tang to Ellis’s nostrils. Ellis’s heightened olfactory organs, characteristic of on-duty police officers, immediately identified this particular bouquet: alcohol. Crawford was over the legal limit. His arrest and conviction for operating while intoxicated ensued. The tale of Ellis, Crawford, and Butterbaugh, and those similar to it, serve as the focus of this Note. It responds, in general terms, to two questions that the anecdote left unanswered: (1) Was Officer Ellis justified in stopping Crawford’s vehicle because he had reason to believe that Butterbaugh needed help? And (2) if his actions were justifiable, on what basis were they justified? The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is a logical threshold for answering such queries. Its hallowed phrasing provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . .” 3 Defined roughly, a search is an invasion by a government agent of an individual’s “actual (subjective) expectation of privacy . . . that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” 4 A seizure occurs when a government agent “by means of physical force or show of authority, has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen.” 5 The Fourth Amendment, therefore, insulates individuals from searches and seizures performed by government agents that are unreasonable in nature. The subject of a search or seizure is the individual whose Fourth Amendment rights are implicated by the government action in question. In Whren v. United States , the Supreme Court established that a stop of a vehicle by a police officer constitutes a seizure of both the driver and the passengers. 6 In the above, then, both Crawford and Butterbaugh were subjects of Officer Ellis’s seizure when he stopped their vehicle. Thus, Ellis’s action clearly invoked the Fourth Amendment. However, the Constitution does not universally prohibit governmental searches and seizures. By its 3. U.S. CONST. amend. IV. Article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution is essentially identical to the Fourth Amendment. IOWA CONST. art. I, § 8. 4. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring). For more information on Katz and Fourth Amendment searches, see 1 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH AMENDMENT § 2.1 (5th ed. 2012). 5. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19 n.16 (1968); see also LAFAVE, supra note 4, § 2.1(a) (detailing the general scope of Fourth Amendment “seizure” jurisprudence). Of course, “seizures” also constitute the taking of property by government officials. See LAFAVE, supra note 4, § 2.1(a) (“The act of physically taking and removing tangible personal property is generally a ‘seizure.’” (quoting 68 AM. JUR. 2D Searches and Seizures § 8 (1973)) (internal quotation marks omitted)). The discussion of seizures in this Note will be limited to the seizure of persons. 6. Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 80910 (1996) (“Temporary detention of individuals during the stop of an automobile by the police, even if only for a brief period and for a limited purpose, constitutes a ‘seizure’ of ‘persons’ . . . .”). 2014] HELP! I NEED SOMEBODY (OR DO I?) 1845 terms, “[t]he Fourth Amendment prohibits only unreasonable searches and seizures, not reasonable ones.” 7 Therefore, if Ellis’s seizure was...