State of Iowa v. Dean Norman Swanson

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 25-0074
Filed April 29, 2026
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State of Iowa,
Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
Dean Norman Swanson,
Defendant–Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for O’Brien County,
The Honorable David A. Lester, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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Michael J. Jacobsma of Jacobsma Law Firm, P.C., Orange City,
attorney for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and David Banta, Assistant Attorney
General, attorneys for appellee.
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Considered without oral argument
by Greer, P.J., Ahlers, J., and Bower, S.J.
Opinion by Ahlers, J.

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AHLERS, Judge.

Dean Swanson challenges his conviction for failure to affix a drug
stamp while possessing forty-two and one-half grams or more of marijuana.1
He contends the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress
evidence law enforcement found in his house while executing a search
warrant. He contends the information used to obtain the warrant was
obtained by a prior illegal entry into his house in violation of his right to be
free from unreasonable search and seizures secured by the Fourth and
Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and article I,
section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

Based on our de novo review, we find the following facts. In
January 2024, Swanson had an adult houseguest staying at his home in
Sutherland. The houseguest was having marital trouble and confided his
troubles to a Sutherland police officer when they encountered each other at
a local store. The officer gave the houseguest encouragement. A few days
later, struggling with his mental health due to his marriage problems and his
mom’s passing, the houseguest was “having a mental breakdown every
hour” over the course of the evening. He called a therapy hotline and was
on that call “most of the night.” When he awoke in the morning, he called a
suicide hotline, which notified law enforcement. The same officer was
dispatched to do a welfare check. The houseguest was still on the phone with

1
See Iowa Code § 453B.12(2) (2024) (making it a class “D” felony for a dealer to
possess a taxable substance without affixing appropriate stamps); see also id.
§§ 453B.1(3)(a)(2) (defining “dealer” to include a person who possesses forty-two and
one-half grams or more of marijuana), .1(10) (defining “taxable substance” to include
marijuana).

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the suicide hotline when the officer arrived at Swanson’s house where the
houseguest was staying.

The officer knocked on the door to the screened porch of the house,
and the houseguest came out and spoke to the officer. He confided to the
officer that he wanted to run out into traffic and use a knife to hurt himself.
Based on the circumstances, the officer and the houseguest agreed that it
would be best if the houseguest went to the hospital to be evaluated, and the
officer would take him. The houseguest said he wanted to go to the basement
to retrieve boots and a coat. Given the houseguest’s suicidal ideation, the
officer was concerned about leaving him unattended, so the officer asked him
if there was anyone else in the house that could retrieve the boots and coat.
The houseguest said Swanson was asleep and the houseguest didn’t want to
awaken him. The officer then told the houseguest that if he went to retrieve
his boots and coat, the officer would have to come with him. The officer then
followed the houseguest as he walked through the house to the room in the
basement where he kept his belongings, gathered his boots and coat, and went
back outside. On the trek to the basement and back, the officer smelled
marijuana in the house. After exiting the house, the officer immediately took
the houseguest to the hospital as agreed.

After taking the houseguest to the hospital, the officer applied for a
search warrant for Swanson’s house based on the smell of marijuana. The
warrant was issued. Execution of the warrant resulted in officers finding
marijuana that ultimately led to charges against Swanson.

Swanson sought to suppress the evidence found via execution of the
search warrant. He claimed his rights to be free from unreasonable searches
and seizures secured by the United States Constitution and Iowa
Constitution were violated because the officer who applied for the warrant
illegally entered his house without a warrant, so the evidence of the smell of

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marijuana that supported the warrant application was illegally obtained. The
district court denied Swanson’s motion to suppress, finding that the officer’s
original entry into the house was permissible without a warrant because he
was undertaking a community caretaking function of providing emergency
aid. Swanson appeals.

II. Standard of Review

Because Swanson raises a constitutional challenge, our review is de
novo. See State v. Amble, 22 N.W.3d 265, 270 (Iowa 2025). With de novo
review, we independently make factual findings. Id. We are not bound by the
district court’s fact findings, but we give them deference. Id.

III. Analysis

Swanson claims the officer’s initial entry into his house with his
houseguest was unconstitutional. Both the Fourth Amendment and article I,
section 8 of the Iowa Constitution protect Swanson’s right to be secure in his
house against unreasonable searches and seizures. See State v. Abu Youm, 988
N.W.2d 713, 718 (Iowa 2023). But the right is not absolute, as searches and
seizures based on a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement are
not unreasonable. Id. The State bears the burden to prove applicability of a
warrant exception. Id.

Here, the State relies on the emergency aid branch of the community
caretaking exception to the warrant requirement. Under the Fourth
Amendment, this exception permits an officer to “enter a home without a
warrant if [the officer] has ʻan objectively reasonable basis for believing that
an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.’”
Case v. Montana, 607 U.S. __, __, 146 S. Ct. 500, 508 (2026) (quoting
Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 400 (2006)). Under article I, section 8
of the Iowa Constitution, the standard is the same except there is the

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additional requirement that the State prove “that the officer subjectively
intended to engage in community caretaking.” Abu Youm, 988 N.W.2d at 719
(citation omitted).

Assessing the community caretaking exception involves a three-step
process of deciding whether (1) there was a seizure; (2) the police conduct
was a bona fide community caretaker activity; and (3) the public need and
interest outweigh the intrusion on the citizen’s privacy. Id. at 718–19. As to
the first step, the parties agree that the officer’s entry into Swanson’s house
constituted a temporary seizure of the house. We accept that agreement to
conclude that a seizure occurred.

As to the second step, we find the officer was conducting a bona fide
community caretaker activity when he entered the house. Specifically, the
sole purpose of entry was to ensure that the houseguest did not harm himself.
This was a bona fide community caretaker activity in light of the houseguest’s
threats of suicide made to the suicide hotline operator and his admission to
the officer that he was contemplating suicide.

As to the third step, the public need and interest of ensuring the
houseguest did not harm himself before the officer could get him to the
hospital for evaluation outweighed the harm caused by the intrusion on
Swanson’s or the houseguest’s privacy. See Case, 146 S. Ct. at 508 (finding
entry into a home to prevent self-harm by an occupant to be reasonable).

Applying this three-step process, we find that the officer’s entry into
Swanson’s house to accompany the houseguest and prevent him from
harming himself did not violate the Fourth Amendment. And, as to the Iowa
Constitution’s added requirement that “the officer subjectively intended to
engage in community caretaking,” Abu Youm, 988 N.W.2d at 719 (citation
omitted), we find that requirement met as well. First, the officer’s attempt

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to get someone else in the house to gather the houseguest’s boots and coat
while the officer and houseguest waited outside amply demonstrates that he
was there to help the houseguest and not to get a look around the house.
Second, the officer gave the houseguest fair warning that, if he went back in
the house to gather his boots and coat, the officer would have to go with him.
This gave the houseguest the option of leaving without going back into the
house, again demonstrating that it was not the officer’s intention to enter the
house for anything other than caretaking purposes. Third, once in the house
and discovering the smell of marijuana, the officer did not rummage around
or begin investigating the smell. Instead, he stayed on his community
caretaking mission by doing nothing more than ensuring the houseguest’s
safety. As such, the officer’s entry into Swanson’s house did not violate
article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.

Finally, we reject Swanson’s claim that this was not a true emergency
because the houseguest “was not in imminent danger of serious injury or
harm.” True, the houseguest did not have a gun to his head or a knife to his
throat when he answered the officer’s knock. But he had just gotten off the
phone with the suicide hotline after spending the night on the phone with a
twenty-four-hour therapy service, and he admitted to the officer that he was
thinking about killing himself and gave specifics about how he intended to do
it. Under these circumstances, it was not only reasonable for the officer to
stay with the houseguest to ensure he did not harm himself, but we would
severely question the officer’s judgment had he left the houseguest alone. We
have little doubt that, if the officer had let the houseguest go back into the
house alone to retrieve his boots and coat and the houseguest had harmed
himself, the officer would be criticized for failing to prevent the harm. See
Abu Youm, 988 N.W.2d at 721 (considering whether officers would be
criticized for not entering a property to potentially save a life as relevant to
the community caretaking question). As the Supreme Court noted in another

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case involving entry of a home to safeguard a person threatening suicide,
“The decision of the officers to enter his home to prevent [self-harm]—even
at some significant risk to themselves—was (at the least) reasonable. The
Fourth Amendment did not require them, as [the defendant] now argues, to
leave him to his fate.” Case, 146 S. Ct. at 508.

After our de novo review, we find that the district court got it right in
its thorough, well-reasoned ruling denying Swanson’s motion to suppress.2
Accordingly, we affirm.

AFFIRMED.

2
We note an issue not raised by either party. Even if we had agreed with Swanson that
the officer’s original entry into the house was unlawful, we question whether we could
grant the relief he requests of suppressing the evidence found by execution of the search
warrant. That is because the warrant application is not part of our record, and we would
need to review the application’s contents to determine whether the warrant issued based
only on the smell of marijuana, as Swanson claims. See State v. Seager, 751 N.W.2d 204,
211–12 n.5 (Iowa 1997) (noting that the procedure to determine the validity of a warrant
when it is issued based on illegally obtained evidence is to excise the tainted information
from the application and then determine whether the remaining information in the
application establishes probable cause).

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