by Anthony W. Accurso

In a case of first impression, the Supreme Court of Idaho held that the warrantless search of a patient who was in civil protective custody violated the Fourth Amendment because the State failed to establish that the search fell within a recognized exception or was reasonable under the circumstances.

Background

Cory Lee Adams was involuntarily committed to the custody of the director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare under Idaho Code § 66-329 in a separate Lincoln County case and was being held at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center. A St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center staff member contacted the Twin Falls Police Department to arrange transportation for Adams to Canyon View Hospital for a routine medical appointment, reporting that Adams was “not destructive – but confrontational.”

Officers Comeau and Christensen were dispatched to the St. Luke’s Emergency Room. When they arrived, Adams was cooperative and compliant as he voluntarily walked to the patrol car, though his hands were restrained behind his back. Before transporting Adams, Christensen checked Adams “for weapons” as a safety precaution and located a “wadded up piece of whatever” in his front left pants pocket that he suspected was drug-related. The small baggie was later confirmed to be methamphetamine, and Adams was subsequently charged with felony possession of a controlled substance.

Adams filed a motion to suppress, arguing his Fourth Amendment rights were violated because he did not consent to the warrantless search of his person, the officers were not justified in performing a safety pat-down pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), because they had no reasonable basis to believe he was armed and dangerous, and that Christensen did not conduct a pat search – but rather simply reached into his pockets without cause or first conducting a pat-down – as shown by body camera footage. He also asserted that even if a pat-down occurred, a small baggie of methamphetamine could not be perceived as a weapon under the “plain touch” or “plain feel” exception. 

At the evidentiary hearing, Christensen was the only witness who testified, stating that Adams was calm with law enforcement, that during the pat-down he did not feel anything resembling a weapon but rather an item that seemed like a “drug-related item,” and that he was following his personal practice rather than a standard police department policy. The State clarified that the Twin Falls Police Department had a policy directing officers to search every individual placed in patrol cars, emphasized Adams’ mental instability and safety concerns related to potential drug ingestion in patrol cars, and relied on case law to argue the search was reasonable under a community caretaking role.

Concluding the search was executed without a warrant, that Christensen did not ask for permission but told Adams he was going to search him, that the Terry pat-down exception did not apply due to the lack of reasonable articulable suspicion of a weapon given Adams’ cooperative demeanor and lack of threatening behavior, and that no other exception to the warrant requirement applied, the court granted the suppression motion.

The court denied the State’s motion for reconsideration without a hearing, reiterating its findings that the search became investigatory once no weapons were found and a more invasive search proceeded, and the court rejected the argument that internal police policies supersede constitutional safeguards.

The State timely appealed, arguing on appeal that the search was reasonable under the community caretaking function and special needs exception given Adams’ custody on a mental health hold.

Analysis

The Idaho Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of the warrantless search of Adams, who was involuntarily committed under Idaho Code § 66-329 and was being transported by police for medical reasons. The Court affirmed the district court’s order granting Adams’ motion to suppress evidence of methamphetamine discovered during the search, holding that the search violated the Fourth Amendment.

On appeal, the State claimed that the community caretaking exception to the warrant requirement applied and that the Twin Falls Police Department had a policy to search the pockets of anyone being transported in a patrol car, allegedly for officer safety and because a number of persons had overdosed in the back of patrol cars. The State also claimed that, because Adams was “in custody” for civil commitment, he was subject to a lower expectation of privacy in his person due to the “special need” of law enforcement. Additionally, the State argued that the search was permissible as incident to involuntary custody, analogous to a search incident to arrest, given potential risks of self-harm or harm to officers from items like pens or medication.

The Court began by noting that under the Fourth Amendment, warrantless searches are per se unreasonable unless they occur in circumstances which fall under narrowly tailored and recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement or are otherwise reasonable under the circumstances. State v. Hoskins, 443 P.3d 231 (Idaho 2019). The State bears the burden of overcoming the presumption of unreasonableness. Id. The Court emphasized that the Fourth Amendment protects “the sanctity of the person against unreasonable intrusions,” as articulated in cases like Sibron v. New York, 392 U.S. 40 (1968), in which thrusting a hand into a pocket without a prior Terry pat-down was deemed to be a violation of Fourth Amendment protections.

sThe U.S. Supreme Court first recognized the community caretaking role of law enforcement in Cady v. Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433 (1973). Dombrowski recognized that officers are called to solve a myriad of society’s problems and will sometimes inadvertently discover evidence of a crime. However, it instructed that these roles should be “totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute.” In Idaho, the community caretaking function has been limited to three categories consistent with Cady: (1) detaining a person when there is a present need for assistance, State v. Page, 103 P.3d 454 (Idaho 2004), and State v. Towner, 503 P.3d 989 (Idaho 2022); (2) stopping a motorist for a genuine concern of present need or public interest, such as an unsecured hazardous load, State v. Van Zanten, 546 P.3d 163 (Idaho 2024), or briefly detaining a nearby motorist, State v. Godwin, 826 P.2d 452 (Idaho 1992), but not merely for passing an accident, State v. Wixom, 947 P.2d 1000 (Idaho 1997); and (3) impounding a vehicle when reasonable under the circumstances, like when obstructing traffic, but not as a pretext for investigation, State v. Smith, 569 P.3d 137 (Idaho 2025), and State v. Weaver, 900 P.2d 196 (Idaho 1995). 

The U.S. Supreme Court narrowed Cady with its ruling in Caniglia v. Strom, 593 U.S. 194 (2021), where it rejected a “freestanding community-caretaking exception” to the warrant requirement, clarifying that recognition of officers’ civic tasks is not “an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.” Before Caniglia, an officer’s safety during a community caretaking function might have justified a warrantless search in some pre-Caniglia cases, but this is no longer the case. Thus, the Court explained that no such rationale justified a warrantless search of Adams’ pockets simply because he was being transported in a patrol car.

The Court rejected the State’s reliance on pre-Caniglia out-of-state cases like State v. Dempsey, 947 P.2d 265 (Wash. Ct. App. 1997), noting their limited persuasive value, and observed that even subsequent cases like State v. A.A., 349 P.3d 909 (Wash. Ct. App. 2015), limited searches to those “strictly relevant” to caretaking with a “risk of imminent or substantial harm.” The Court also clarified that its prior statement in Towner recognizing community caretaking as an exception to the Fourth Amendment was mere dicta because that case turned on statutory grounds. A search of a person is at least as intrusive as a home search, and Caniglia prohibits warrantless personal searches under this doctrine alone, according to the Court.

The Court also rejected the State’s claim that Adams was subject to a search because he was “in custody.” Officers are generally allowed to search a person subject to arrest, but Idaho law “directs that patients subject to protective civil custody should not be treated as criminals.” I.C. § 66-329(5). The Court explained that § 66-329 outlines judicial procedures for involuntary commitment, requiring a determination that the person is “mentally ill and either likely to injure himself or others or is gravely disabled due to mental illness.” I.C. § 66-329(11)(b). A finding of “likely to injure” involves a “substantial risk” of “physical harm,” I.C. § 66-317(10), while “grave disability” does not inherently establish such risk, I.C. § 66-317(12).

The record lacked evidence of Adams’ specific classification, weakening the State’s safety rationale, the Court stated. Additionally, § 66-346 safeguards patient rights, including free communication, personal belongings, and refusal of treatments, with violations punishable as misdemeanors. I.C. §§ 66-346(a), 66-349. Civil commitment is therapeutic and non-punitive, unlike criminal arrests based on probable cause under Idaho Code § 19-603. The Court noted that other jurisdictions agree that civil detainees retain greater privacy expectations. See, e.g., Lindsey v. State, 639 S.E.2d 584 (Ga. Ct. App. 2006); State v. Lawrence, 648 P.2d 1332 (Or. Ct. App. 1982); Cordell v. Weber, 673 N.W.2d 49 (S.D. 2003).

The Court distinguished the State’s cited out-of-state cases like State v. Collins, 53 P.3d 953 (Utah Ct. App. 2002), and State v. Marsh, 462 P.2d 459 (Or. Ct. App. 1969), noting they relied on statutes implying searches for dangerous individuals, unlike Idaho’s two-pronged commitment criteria. The Court rejected conflating search incident to arrest (for safety and evidence preservation, Virginia v. Moore, 553 U.S. 164 (2008)) with special needs (for non-criminal contexts where warrants are impracticable, Bd. of Educ. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822 (2002)). The State failed to properly raise special needs below or in its opening brief, invoking it only in reply, which waived the argument. State v. Kimbley, 539 P.3d 969 (Idaho 2023). Substantively, the State provided no evidence for the two-step inquiry: assessing privacy interests and search intrusiveness against government needs. State v. Doe, 233 P.3d 1275 (Idaho 2010). Thus, the Court concluded that generalized safety concerns were insufficient without specific evidence tied to Adams’ commitment or facility protocols.

The Court explained that the current case is most similar to R.A.S. v. State, 141 So.3d 687 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2014). R.A.S. was a truant minor to whom police provided a ride to school. The officer conducted a pat search for weapons and found a “squishy bulge” in the child’s pocket which turned out to be marijuana. The Florida court held that “truancy is not an arrest,” authorizing “at most … a pat-down search for weapons” but not a search of the child’s pockets when no bulges similar to weapons are found. For officer safety, a limited pat-down before transport under § 66-329(12) is reasonable, analogous to criminal frisks requiring reasonable belief of danger. Ybarra v. Illinois, 444 U.S. 85 (1979); see State v. Fairchild, 429 P.3d 877 (Idaho Ct. App. 2018). However, the Court stated that Christensen exceeded this by reaching into Adams’ pocket after feeling a “wadded up piece of whatever” that “did not feel like a weapon” but seemed “drug-related.” No evidence showed weapon-like attributes or imminent harm. The Court reasoned that the search shifted to investigatory, rendering it unreasonable under the totality. See Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113 (1998) (no full search justified absent specific safety belief).

Conclusion

The Court ruled that Adams was similarly in custodial, non-criminal detention, and thus none of the argued exceptions to the warrant requirement applied. While recognizing the dangers of drugs in mental health facilities, the Court explained that the State failed to meet its burden with evidence, leaving room for future arguments under special needs with proper support.

Accordingly, the Court affirmed the district court’s suppression motion. See: State v. Adams, 573 P.3d 1159 (Idaho 2025).  

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