14
Per Curiam
here.2 It simply found that after the homicide crime scene was secured for investigation, a search of "anything and everything found within the crime scene area" was "within the law." App. A to Pet. for Cert., at 3.
This position squarely conflicts with Mincey v. Arizona, supra, where we rejected the contention that there is a "murder scene exception" to the Warrant Clause of the Fourth Amendment. We noted that police may make warrantless entries onto premises if they reasonably believe a person is in need of immediate aid and may make prompt warrantless searches of a homicide scene for possible other victims or a killer on the premises, id., at 392, but we rejected any general "murder scene exception" as "inconsistent with the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments— . . . the warrantless search of Mincey's apartment was not constitutionally permissible simply because a homicide had recently occurred there." Id., at 395; see also Thompson v. Louisiana, 469 U. S. 17, 21 (1984) (per curiam). Mincey controls here.
Although the trial court made no attempt to distinguish Mincey, the State contends that the trial court's ruling is supportable on the theory that petitioner's direction of the police to the scene of the attack implied consent to search as
2 The State suggests that the trial court's finding that the search was "within the law" could be read as premised on the theories of plain view, exigent circumstances, and inventory that the State advanced below. No trace of this reasoning appears in the trial court's opinion, which instead appears to undermine the State's interpretation. It seems implausible that the court found that there was a risk of intentional or accidental destruction of evidence at a "secured" crime scene or that the authorities were performing a mere inventory search when the premises had been secured for "investigative purposes" and the officers opened the briefcase "in the ordinary course of investigating a homicide." Nor does the court's validation of "investiga[ting] and examin[ing] . . . anything and everything found within the crime scene area," including photographs inside a closed briefcase, apparently rest on the plain-view exception. App. A to Pet. for Cert., at 2, 3.
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