State of Washington v. Blockman

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Police officers went to an apartment to talk with a resident as part of an investigation of a reported robbery. After the resident invited the officers inside, the officers announced that they were going to walk through the rest of the apartment. As they did so, they saw a man apparently in the midst of conducting an illegal drug transaction.   In a friend of the court brief, the ACLU-WA said that the police officers’ walk-through of the home was a warrantless search, and thus the findings of their search must be suppressed. Article 1 Section 7 of the Washington constitution protects homes against warrantless searches by the government. Although there is an exception for “protective sweeps,” it does not apply in this case, because the search the officers made was not in the context of an arrest.