PLAIN VIEW DOCTRINE AND DYING DECLARATION

The concept of admissibility of plain view evidence and the accrued legal requirements
have been contradictory as the decision to seize the property is entirely left on the hands of the
officer. For the case of Bob, for the officers to be able to invoke a plain view seizure of Bob’s
property, they must have a clear understanding of the position, development, and limitation of
the plain view doctrine, which offers a guideline for plain view seizure of properties. The
doctrine holds that in the course of a lawful search of a given property, an officer is allowed to
seize items in plain view if they have evidence value, or they are incriminating even if there is no
prior authorization. Though the plain view doctrine is an exception to the general rule that holds
that warrantless searches are presumptively unreasonable, a plain view observation of an item
does not generally constitute a search in reference to the Fourth Amendment. However, based on
the case, Horton v. California Horton v. California, 496 US 128 134 n 5 (1990) an individual
does not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in contraband left in plain view as viewed by
an officer from a lawful vantage point. Correspondingly, regarding case Minnesota v. Dickerson,
508 U.S. 366, 375 (1993), a seizure of properties in plain view does not implicate or impact the
privacy interests of an individual. Rather it deprives him or her the accrued dominion over the
property (Grantham, 2010).  
Based on the above arguments, it is essential for an officer to understand the requirement
of the plain view doctrine before concluding whether to seize the property or not. The
requirements include the item or property must be in plain view; the damaging nature of the item
must be immediately apparent, and the officer or the police involved must lawfully be in the

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place where he or she discovered the evidence. In reference to the lawful presence of the officer,
he or she must have prior valid intrusion in that the officer must have a search warrant or
intrusion supported by exception to warrant requirements such as consent and exigency. The
complexity of prior valid intrusion occurs when intrusion is as a result of exigency. The notion of
exigency is based on three major elements, which include the primary officer motivation is not to
make an arrest, a reasonable ground to believe the existence of an emergency that requires the
assistance of the police or reasonable basis to associate a given location with a given emergency
(Nwawka, 2008). Exigency has its limitations in that the police must have proved there was no
time to get a warrant; the gravity of the situation was so compelling such that it made a
warrantless search reasonable and that the police did not create the accrued emergency.
Regarding the incriminating nature of the item, there must be a probable cause for the
officer to believe the item is evidence of criminality or contraband. In this case, an officer
supposed to rely on his or her level of expertise and experience to be able to make the accrued
conclusion. Notably, the notion of immediately apparent is largely diluted by the increased effort
of the police to discover additionally incriminating evidence (Grantham, 2010).
Concepts dying declaration and exigent circumstances in the context of Bob’s case
Dying declaration as to the last words of a dying person, and it has historically been
considered as an exception to the hearsay rule (Fulkerson & Spencer, 2010). In the legal
vernacular, a dying declaration is a statement made in extremis, and it largely communicates the
circumstance surrounding the death of the individual. Notably, the information contained in the
dying declaration can be admitted as evidence and can be the cornerstone for the conviction of
the alleged perpetrators. 

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           For the case of Bob and the two officers, to understand the accrued admissibility of his
dying declaration, one must have a clear understanding of the applicability of this law and when
a dying declaration is considered as evidence. As stated, a dying declaration is admitted as
evidence as an exception of the hearsay rule. One of the requirements for the admissibility of the
dying declaration is that the declarant is dead during the time of the trial, and during the time of
the trial he or she believed that death was near, imminent and certain. Another requirement is
that it must appear that the individual who makes the declaration, if living, would have been
competent to testify. Lastly, the dying declaration is only applicable only in trials for homicide,
where the defendant is accused of the death of the deceased individual who made the declaration.
One of the rationales for admission of dying declaration is that the individual making the
declaration has no need to dye with a lie making his or her statement relatively valid. Courts
have agreed that the approach of death produces an apparent state of mind, which calls for the
utterances of the dying individual to be considered as free from all motives to lie or misstate
(Fordham, 2011). 

The rationale to the defendant arguments

   There are two major defendants’ arguments regarding Bob’s case. The first argument is
that the plain view doctrine did not apply to this case; therefore, every discovered should be
tossed. The second argument is that Bob was not dying, and therefore the dying declaration he
made to the police officer was not valid.
           For the first argument, I think the defendant’s argument will not be successful because of
several reasons. First, through the police officers did not have a search warrant to Bob’s property,
they had received noise complaints from the neighbors a notion which made them believe that

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there was the need to take action. In this regard, there was an exigency which was not initially
created by the police. On the other hand, there was a reasonable basis to associate the emergency
with Bob’s property as he did not properly tend to his dogs, which appeared to be fierce and
dangerous to the general public. Regarding plain view as stipulated by the doctrine, the guns
were in an open place where the officers could view them. Correspondently, ownership of such
guns is a probable cause for the officers to believe they were evidence or contraband.   
For the second argument, I think the defendant’s argument would be successful based on two
major reasons. One of the reasons is that Bob was still alive, and a dying declaration is only
applicable if the declarant was deceased. The second reason is that the dying declaration only
applies to cases of homicide.

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References

Fordham. (2011). The Admissibility of Dying Declaration. Retrieved 30 December 2019, from
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2018&context=flr
Fulkerson, A., & Spencer, K. (2010). Patients’ Dying Declarations May Be Legal Evidence –
JEMS. Retrieved 30 December 2019, from https://www.jems.com/2016/04/30/patients-
dying-declarations-may-be-legal-evidence/
Grantham, P. (2010). Plain View. Retrieved 30 December 2019, from
https://olemiss.edu/depts/ncjrl/pdf/Law%20Enforcement%20Materials/Plain%20View%20Doctr
ine.pdf
Nwawka, I. (2008). The Immediate Threat: Multiple Definitions of Exigency Create Conflicting
Jurisprudence. Retrieved 30 December 2019, from
https://www.socsci.uci.edu/lawforum/content/journal/LFJ_2008_nwawka.pdf