Picogna v. State

Appeal from Shelby Circuit Court (CC-17-214)

KELLUM, JUDGE

Hayden Andrew Picogna was indicted for two counts of assault in the second degree, see § 13A-6-21(a)(4), Ala. Code 1975, and one count of

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resisting arrest, see § 13A-10-41, Ala. Code 1975, resulting from his interactions with police officers in his motel room. Pursuant to a plea agreement with the State, Picogna pleaded guilty to harassment, see § 13A-11-8, Ala. Code 1975, as a lesser-included offense of the assault charge in the first count of the indictment.^[1] In accordance with the agreement, the Shelby Circuit Court sentenced him to 90 days in jail, suspended the sentence, and placed him on unsupervised probation for 24 months. As part of his plea agreement, Picogna expressly reserved the right to appeal the trial court's denial of his motion to suppress all evidence of what occurred in his motel room on August 28, 2016, on the ground that police officers entered the room in violation of his rights under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The facts are straightforward. Police received information from Picogna's former girlfriend, who was staying with her mother in Hoover, that Picogna, who was in Colorado, had threatened to kill her, her family, "and anyone that got in his way with a knife or a vehicle and then

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himself." (R. 9.) After making the threat on Friday, August 26, 2016, Picogna drove to Alabama, arriving on Sunday, August 28, 2016, and rented a room at a motel in Birmingham. Officers with the Hoover Police Department went to the motel to investigate the threat Picogna had made. They knocked on the door to Picogna's room and, when he answered, asked Picogna to come outside to talk about the threat. When Picogna saw one of the officers holding a non-lethal "beanbag gun," he told the officers that he wanted to speak with an attorney and attempted to end the encounter by closing the door and retreating into the room. (R. 16.) One of the officers reached across the threshold of the door to grab Picogna's arm and placed his boot in the doorframe to prevent Picogna from closing the door.^[2] Picogna attempted to pull away and, in doing so,

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pulled the officer fully into room, at which point he dislodged the officer's grip, dove onto the bed, and tried to put his hands under the pillow. Worried that Picogna was trying to grab a weapon, the officers "reengage[d] him." (R. 13.) The record indicates that when the two officers reengaged Picogna inside the motel room, a struggle ensued and both officers suffered injuries (scratches and/or bruises) before subduing and arresting Picogna.

Picogna argues on appeal, as he did in the trial court, that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures when the officers entered his motel room without his consent, without a warrant, and without probable cause plus exigent

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circumstances, ^[3] and that, therefore, all evidence of what occurred inside the motel room, i.e., all evidence of the crimes with which he was charged, ^[4] is due to be suppressed under the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment. He also argues that the trial court made an erroneous factual finding in reaching its conclusion that the officers' entry did not violate the Fourth Amendment. It is not necessary for us to address these arguments because, even if the officers violated the Fourth Amendment when they entered Picogna's motel room and the trial court erred in finding otherwise, the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule does not bar admission of evidence relating to crimes Picogna committed after the violation occurred. See Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 140 (2009) ("The fact that a Fourth Amendment violation occurred ... does not necessarily mean that the exclusionary rule applies."); and Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 223 (1983) ("The question whether the exclusionary

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rule's remedy is appropriate in a particular context has long been regarded as an issue separate from the question whether the Fourth Amendment rights of the party seeking to invoke the rule were violated by police conduct.").

"The exclusionary rule was adopted to effectuate the Fourth Amendment right of all citizens 'to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures. ...' Under this rule, evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment cannot be used in a criminal proceeding against the victim of the illegal search and seizure. Weeks v United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914); Mapp v Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). This prohibition applies as well to the fruits of the illegally seized evidence Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471 (1963); Silverthorne Lumber Co. v. United States, 251 U.S. 385 (1920).

"The purpose of the exclusionary rule is not to redress the injury to the privacy of the search victim:

" '(T)he ruptured privacy of the victims'