below police officers may not enter a person's home without the approval of the magistrate unless emergency leaves no time to seek a warrant so the key question here is whether probable cause to believe a person has committed a misdemeanor and retreated automatically gives rise to an exit and see requiring immediate action for to answer for two reasons the answer is no st the government interest in investigating minor offenses is not always or even usually strong enough to support home entries and sanctioned by judicial officers just as justice jackson noted over a half century ago and just doesn't stress more recently such invasions can be wholly out of proportion with minor nonviolent offenses not to mention mere infractions which are also swept up in a court appointed me cases rule  nd as the numerous cases of cases in the brief demonstrate there are many non threatening reasons why people sometimes step inside continue into their garages when pursued by officers teenagers are sometimes frightened or confused and wish their parents to be present for any questioning women driving alone are sometimes afraid of stark i'd stop on dark roads and occasionally are not even sure those following them are police officers and residents of certain communities often wish to avoid having others see them interacting with the police particularly when they're likely to be asked to i perpetrators of other more serious offenses none of this is to say that a person who are treason to his or her dwelling is amicus but that home free a warrantless entry is still allowed when a concrete exits to the exists and even when there isn't any emergency the police still have many just the police could just go ahead and knock on the door i would expect that would be a terribly dangerous situation the one thing you know is that the person inside is trying to get away from you and you know if you go right up to the door and knock  in you shouldn't be concerned that he might swing the door open and have had have a gun in the alternative and beat you suggest about well just you know you you know you can go get a warrant but you know it's easier to get a warrant now than it was maybe twenty years ago but you still don't have any idea how long that's going to take and during that time you know the person in the house can also you know destroy evidence or again arm in arm himself call confederates to to come i think the definition of hot pursuit the other side of propounding includes somebody simply stepping in off their front porch or driving into their garage as in this case so they're going to many situations where somebody seems to be to simply seeking a moment of refuge or or respite and i  think in those situations knocking may work but if knocking doesn't work all the time as the courts noted more recently a warrant can be available within five or ten minutes sometimes sometimes some sometimes but you know even in places that have a system set up like that you know you use magistrates run duty and you can call and it's not always the case that you go through get through right away and certainly that's sufficient time even if it's just two minutes for somebody inside the house to get a weapon so we don't disagree mr chief justice that however long it might take to get a warrant whether it's five minutes or five hours if the officer being bad has reason to believe that the update person will grab a gun and will summon competitive anything like that then there would be actors and circumstance arrest him for littering it seems to me that that's a situation where you'd be most concerned i mean he's got something to hide well mr chief justice i think that when you get by without a light that you just have to bear in mind that this is or how the of the circumstances  i could imagine a reckless escape after a minor sense that might totally shift the balance in the way you're describing but again remember we're also talking about somebody taking two steps off their front porch somebody who is literally just walking into the orders or resist arrest too and the scape be under common law i don't think so justice thomas i'm not sure even the other side goes that far and the reason why is because the escapee exception was reserved for people who had already been arrested and remember if they'd been arrested that tells you to thing that tells you once one thing they probably committed a felony to begin with because it's a common law the g g usually didn't even bother arresting people who had committed m misdemeanors unless it was in a fray in progress and secondly it tells you that person is is does pose a very serious flight risk because they've already escaped once and that totally shift the balance in some of the way one thousand scribing with the chief justice what do we do with the cases the common law that seem to allow the officer to enter without a warrant when news when he's pursuing a person who's preaching to engage in breach of the peace i think the way to understand those cases justice thomas is that they presented exigent circumstances remember she said that if there was a need for an immediate arrest that was good enough a common law on the other commentators are in accord and so if warrant one of the things and this is just an aside it just seems a little to ask we would look to common law to determine whether or not a warrantless entry is permitted and the remedy is exclusionary rule which has no basis in common law how do you reconcile those two well i think justice thomas it's important to just answer the th and then the question before you obviously the common law would have something very different to say about the  will if that were before us you had a different case but this could be a phil case as in most of the cases that are cited in the briefs are or you could have a police policy about breaking doors and going into homes for every single misdemeanor no matter what the circumstances so the question is before you under the th amendment needs to be answered and i don't think anybody in this case would urge you i think i wouldn't urge you to deviate from the for the no question and strike into the  ten and certainly the lower courts have said we need an absolute rule here it's just not worth it the person is being chased can just stop he s'posed to and there are dangers all over the place sometimes not sometimes there's a good reason but it's a bright line rule that says hot pursuit is automatically exits in circumstances and so do we do about all those cases and you can find some counterexamples but not too many well just as tough justice briar if you're asking recently about the lower court cases there they are of course very much in conflict when it comes to misdemeanor pursuit which is directly from well you know our mission that he taught you off there for a nd because the problem with trying to separate misdemeanor and and felony is that different states have different rules and different crimes that count as misdemeanors some are pretty serious although that right i'm sorry you draw a line if you're going to do it misdemeanor but massachusetts is very different from california out of the so what do we do we agree you shouldn't draw a line and what you should do is do what the court has always done with evidence circumstances particularly dealing with the home which is do it on a case by case basis and leave the officer substantial discretion to analyze the situation as the court has always said but do require a shifts and because the home is the th amendment's most protected place in an extraordinary privacy interests there you need to have a case by case assessment and the court said the same thing in mcneely when you're dealing with a particularly important privacy interest there the taste by case analysis and justice briar as a practical matter i think it's important to understand that officers already do this they already do it on a daily basis but the edges circumstances doctrine in general and even in many jurisdictions including in california as the l a county briefs shows officers do this every day while engaged in what we call hot pursuit or flight so we're not asking the officers to do anything they aren't already being instructed by their own departments including the department of justice  to do when it comes to a situation involving flight thank you so so you know mr fischer i want to try out this argument which supports your position that the argument very simply is but make it their justifications for such a doctrine because when an arrestee is chased and flees into his house there's strong reasons across the board for not waiting for a warrant there's a heightened risk that this person is going to sneak away before the house can be surrounded one of the briefs says it takes a lot of search to surround the house waiting for a wire there's a heightened risk that evidence is going to be destroy below held was that a reasonable person in his position would have known that the officer was trying to stop him avast after viewing the video even that seems to me dubious and if you take into account mr lenz blood alcohol content is even more questionable but if we hold that hot pursuit choir's a hot pursuit one would go a long way toward preventing stoneburner cases particularly define the word hot as requiring some sort of reckless or extended chase but i think there's two things i would i would point out there that that you want to think about him pause over the st is that you could have a single door apartment like in minnesota versus olson that wouldn't require that more than one officer so there's going to be many facts and circumstances and as i said to justice brier the teaching of the court case on valving the home is when there's over breath combined with a serious felony i think it's hard to imagine situations where you wouldn't have evidence circumstances but the teaching of welsh in this court case law is that the it is just that that there was a varity of the fence does matter and so you don't have to draw a bright figure going back to what justice alito was saying what circumstance where there is a genuine hot pursuit do you think would not justify a police officer just on the basis of the pursuit believing that the person was trying to hide something trying to perhaps a case of a case where a woman was driving alone at night and hurrying to her mother's house and when the officer and pulled up behind her and scared her she tried to run inside the house there are situations involving or i'm talking about the perspective of the police officer because isn't that what we have to look at i think at a price so a police officer watching someone run away why wouldn't and do it in in a genuinely hot pursuit manner wouldn't that be enough to raise reasonable suspicion i think generally yes just the sort of my or it's hard to answer the question entirely in the abstract but remember the officer may know the person so he may know that the person doesn't want to interact with him in public and think that what's going on there could be other reasons why the officer thinks that the person simply wanted to get away from whatever the officer is trying to arrest him so i think deficit and i were not trying to push back very hard on this i'm just trying to say that the teaching of mcneely and and see quite a number of cases which have one after another after another at justice you know said that there is such a rule as to flee in felons so how do you deal with quite a lot  you know some of it but really quite a lot of statements to that effect i think there's two steps in analyzing the case by justice kagan st is to recognize that there's only one case the court has had been fisher i agree with you about santana that you can you can legitimately read santana either way but the way the court has read it and i'm thinking about stiegel and i'm thinking about stanton there are statements to this effect and lotion mcneely it seems that we've made a choice about about which of two possible ways to read santana that you know we have adopted one of them and you're right not in cases where that was the question at hand but again there seems to be such a number of these cases that a mentally you've got it and you've got yourself a rule i think there's twenty two things about the references more recently  cliff of course and i think that i can i dress the empirical question whether i worry about it but i do think it points out that you shouldn't be drawing a line especially in this case where you don't wouldn't have to do it one way or the other between misdemeanors and felonies and i think that is i think a point in my column as to why it makes more sense to just simply look at the severity of the underlying concept as part of the saudi the circumstance and not draw any bright lines on a classification basis in terms of pursuit in the discussion we've had so well i think that you have a case before you where you could hold there was no hot pursuit and then that reasoning and explaining why it was not hot pursuit what i think to be obviously the holding of the court  it's difficult for me to answer too much beyond that as to how you might particularize any further rules and whether those will be direct or not not what we took in the question presented all right i think all the parties agree that it's that that as the court case came to the court this is a hot pursuit as the court has used that phrase in its cases and the difficulty again is it is in santana where the court said that that hot pursuit was present when somebody took a couple steps backward on her front for some threshold of their house and some so we don't have the benefit of the lower court decision we don't have the benefit of the parties to an issue on this right i think that generally correct mika's the constitutional accountability center offer as more seeks to offer more guidance through reference to the common law and identifying rules that we can draw out of that what's your response to that approach i think we are in harmony with that brief just as growth is for two reasons the common law and two basic rules one is that a felony was good enough to continue up pursuit inside of a house and the reason why it was because a felony would have been accounted a lot fence and we think the risk of escape to avoid a men would have been so wrong there that that's why all of those cases would necessarily have qualified under a case by case basis and then the only other category you really have a common law is breach of the peace or in a fray which shows that there is there is physical harm at the direct hurrying or at serious risk and again every one of those cases would call if i had a case by case basis so even though you had you know you could think of as broad a rule that the common law what they really  justice prior about how exigent circumstances would work in this situation because it seems to me that there's a chance that exigent circumstances doctrine what essentially cover the waterfront of all the circumstances you would have when you have a hot pursuit to the house so on page fourteen of your brief you were for summarized existing doctrine with respect to  the risk of persons who are threatened with serious injury to protect the officers of the public and then you also say and this is the one i really want to explore to prevent  and when the exigent circumstances doctrine all those things apply almost inevitably in a hot pursuit case particularly preventing a suspects escape because the suspect has already escaped in essence from or fled from the officer and so to use your phrase there is reason to believe i think i was your phrase to the chief justice there is reason to believe that the suspect will scape from the house because they've already fl is because of this conversation we have been having this morning about how broadly up pursuit is defined not just in the lower court but also in this court when you think about a case like and and so remember to have it i'm not going to disagree with you that somebody who engages in  not good enough when it comes to the whole but you actions and circumstances doctrine i i guess well let me ask you this do you object to the solicitor general's presumption and if so why we do object to it i obviously better than a than a categorical rule that i mean a profound but the reason that we think it is unnecessarily complicated alice we think that we don't precisely know what the presumption means but i think it would mean one of two things either that that back in isolation helped in the favor of finding extant circumstances which we don't disagree with but we just think that that's an artificial legal rule that does it in a way of the ordinary could tell you the circumstances approach or it would become a much more mr fisher i want to ask you about the analytical distinction between escaping are asked and evading arrest so do you concede that the exception would apply and the policeman could break down the door so to  certainly a common law the answer would be yes justice paris and i think that in modern times i think that that would almost always be the case as well and i think the difference is because in a scape is something where somebody has already been taken into a custody into custody and then has fled that custody whereas somebody who is evading i think is the word you used is somebody that has not yet been taken into custody and so in this situation viewed again and to tell the of the circumstances might just be frightened confused so i understand that but i mean to be here in a less imagine you have somebody who has committed something we would all agree it would be a misdemeanor or something minor like but not in a car some say it's on foot let's say it's a minor vandalism in a park and the police approach him to show us already and stop the person is submitted to us already you know there you have an arrest and then the person turns on his heels and runs it's hard to see whether the meaningful times out of ten or more there won't be a meaningful distinction so then the officer would have exigent circumstances but again you have to look at this in a tally of the circumstances and it might be a person has a mental disability and might be a person just doesn't quite understand what's going on it might be the officer knows the person and he's saying i just want to go home see my parents and is running off there could be there just could be more to know in the teaching of the course case law is is that when it comes to the sanctity of the home and remember that's what's really at issue in this case that we don't draw override categorical rules even if there are most always going to envelop situations where there are indeed a stitch in circumstances i think the other way to think about it is if the concern is to have officers  secure in their ability to carry out their jobs you already have built into the edges in circumstances doctrine a less than certitude requirement and so officers are going to be ok when they're in those situations it's just for the outli competitive men why wouldn't it apply you said nine times out of ten but in my hypothetical where someone just refuses to submit turns and runs that there won't be really a distinction between that person  give the officer the ability their science and circumstance i think because on the particular facts of that tense case out of ten the officer may not have any doubt at all and they fully realize that this is not an emergency situation and i think that's the important thing to understand about amicus as a rule is that the only cases the amicus is rule picks up are the ones where there is no edge and circumstance under traditional doctrine and we all agree that if there's a traditional as a circumstance the officer can conduct  warrant less entry the only case is that a categorical rule sweeps in and makes any difference with respect to are ones where the officer knows that there is not a true emergency and there is time to seek a warrant that's what we're here talking about fisher sure i think that there's been a couple of cases a couple of questions i've gotten about respect for police authority and the like and i think the important thing to remember and  why people would escape or at least flee flee an operative an attempt to pause them and this is this is not a new problem is how to deal with this and i think that is poured in to remember that all the way back to the framing in the common law before there was  question of how to deal with people who might be frightened or confused or even distrustful of police officers or constables and the solution has always been the warrant that has been the solution that gives people security in their homes an understanding and calm that officers are proceeding according to law and we think that that lesson from history is equally relevant today when you're dealing with minor offenses and some and officers who sometimes are over the alice in the competitive interest and me only pursuing in apprehending felony and a case specific approach for misdemeanors would be more consistent with president and with the privacy interests underlying the four of them and that i welcome important questions i  guess i would pose the question the justice pryor was focusing on the line between felonies and misdemeanors is is very hard to draw on in many cases it's counterintuitive and it certainly varies from state to a distinction that we've rejected in another context occurring here in the atwater case but what about all those uncertainties your honor we certainly knowledge that officers will not always be in a position to know whether an offense is a felony or misdemeanor that surely knowledge that but the reality is officers will often be in a position to know and we don't believe that this will pose substantial practical problems for officers in the field in a number of man's home is his castle but we've also extended special protection to curtilage today do you your rules apply in that case you know can me why isn't the person home free when he's on the porch he doesn't have to go through the door and there are i think the court as has been pretty clear in recent cases like collins and florida versus hardiness that the curtilage does qualify as part of the special area entitled to dulles protections under the th amendment but i don't think that a suspect would be home free in the curtilage for the same reason that the suspect isn't home free inside the physical structure of the home either to you think just to you think the same protection applies to the curtilage as to the inside of the counsel following up on the chief question and justice briar's questions isn't the definition of them needed a quite different a misdemeanor today quite different from what it was  common law certainly your honor there have been a number of changes to offense classifications since the common my era but in our view the fundamental legal principle recognized the common law is just as vital and relevant today and that fundamental principle was that officers could not pursue charges back into homes without warrants in cases involving minor misdemeanor offenses and we still have a lot of mr minor offenses minor offenses on the books today and so surely the best way to honor and vindicate that founding era connect to the sanctity of the home is not to drop our hand and and discard those historic limits entirely by adopting but the sweeping categorical rule proposed line which is the principle line drawn in american law today for distinguishing offenses based upon their level of severity chief justice mention and justice right to limas we've had quite a bit of as a crime for which the sentence in jail is up to two and a half years and the jail term must be served however not in the state prison but in a local county jail all right so we include as misdemeanors assault and battery carrying a loaded firearm into the influence of drugs reckless driving or a death result i mean they're pretty serious too under your rules if you're after somebody who's just beating up five people to assault and battery or is just really been driving recklessly and killed his wife you're saying no hot pursuit but in california misdemeanors very different minor what we do here are what i think you do is you recognize you limit the scope of the hot pursuit exception to felonies and of course that doesn't mean that our laws entries are not permit it and misdemeanor cases it just means that the officer in those cases has to identify some case acetic basis california you can because it's a felony i mean they'll be all over the place i mean that's what i don't see how to draw this line misdemeanor felony and you don't get in california what you in fact have been saying is a misdemeanor the hot pursuit rule also allows pursuit into the home if it's an jailable which by the way picks up zing up to a year of incarceration justice alito with a police officer has probable cause to believe that a person has committed to offenses each of which is  would not apply the officer would be well that those person could get two consecutive eleven months sentences if he could get one sentence of a year and a day that would fall with on one side or the wine but two consecutive eleven months sentences would not i'm not sure the court would need to resolve all of the questions along those lines administrative questions in this case but i do think that the typical way that probable cause is assessed in the field you look at the end of the jewel crime and not to the possibility of and stacked consecutive sentences for multiple crime so let me ask you this question under the california constitution does the attorney general have the authority to tell the district attorneys of the state so that the state that it will not that they are not to defend any warrantless arrests of persons in the home where the offense  is a minor offense as defined by some definition provided by the attorney general your honor the attorney general of california is the chief law enforcement officer of the state the exact kind of  state constitutional lines and responsibilities that your honor is asking about are fairly and undeveloped as a matter of formal legal process and typical practice is to defer to locally elected district attorney california rule is unconstitutional even though the attorney general i mean you may well be able to effect that change as a matter of policy yes to the exchange with my colleagues involving the difficulty in deciding what's a felony and what's a misdemeanor part of the problem is that what are felonies are no longer absolutely necessarily and in all situations dangerous crimes you can have white collar crimes where there is no danger you can have all sorts of them environmental crimes or other things that don't cause the don't create exigency in the same sense that santana was announcing the rule or that the common law came from and so i don't know why anybody is arguing that there's a difference between felony and mr manners and why we're recognizing a categorical rule at all why isn't the better reading just that hot if you look at our holding in santana we talked about all of the circumstances that would make it likely that a drug dealer would destroy evidence once they saw the police officer on the scene our next case stanton was not about whether or not the issue was a felony or not it was the issue was was the situation such as to justify reasonably entry so i guess what i'm asking is why don't we just announce the rule that i stayed that ex and that one in pursuit contests so there is santana but it's not just santana it's all of the court's many statements over the years describing hot pursuit in tampa are all terms including stand which were did address  the basic line as to whether an offense is violent or dangerous and sometimes it is but a lot of times it's not and that the violence and dangerous aspect of of the conduct seems the more relevant one for purposes of deciding when an intrusion into the home is proper just to give you an example most a mest of violence laws continue to be missed and mean years and then on the other sotomayor said most white collar fraud offenses are felonies not just that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense with respect to when you would allow intrusions into the home and when not your honor it's not just the distinction between felonies as a class and misdemeanors i require as to the likelihood that the offense will involve violence another key distinction is that the penalty is in felony is on the whole are going to be quite a briar points out that different states have different rules about what a felony is and what a misdemeanor is it would seem that the constitution would and its meaning would depend upon the happenstance of positive state law and nd we live in a world in which everything is being criminalized and some professors have even opined that there's not an american alive who hasn't committed a felony and so under some state law in a world like that what why does it make sense to retreat back to the original meaning of the th amendment which i want to oversimplify but generally says that you get to go into a home without a warrant if the officer sees  understanding of the th amendment and in particular to a common law history and tradition i think we understand the common law history possibly on its own point a little bit differently than you do as we understand it the leading common law commentators that  misdemeanor cases involving syria and what unified that entire class of cases seems to be again some patchouli violence or it's imminent threat and what  qualifies as a felony common law was very few crimes and they were all punished by the death penalty flea and today pretty much again anything or everything can be called a felony you're either felonies at common law or certainly a more limited subset than they are today they were all violent though larceny for example was treated as a felony so we do think that the felony pursuit rule at colorado is a pretty good analogue for the categorical role that our ok and then on the common law all of the amicus and page twenty three and this is picking up on a question just disparate as to justice thomas as to mr fisher page twenty three of the amicus brief says a warrantless arrest and common law can always be made whenever a person was lawfully arrested for any cause and afterwords escaped and sheltered himself and a house now of course that's after an arrest i mean just as parents questions pointed this is an extremely close analogue in many circumstances what's your response to that aspect of the common law you're honored by or sponsor that is not an extremely close at all are there is a critical difference between danger to himself or others or to society or who pose pose a risk of you know bolting out of that door and making a run for it while the police standing outside purse to buy for it or or buy a car  if in fact the common law role was quite narrow and said warrantless entries into the home only when there are felonies breaches of the create peace and a phrase and escapes from arrest why wouldn't that end the matter me explain to me what your rationale is for saying that you would then go on to exit in circumstances but you aren't to responses one is a quibble with the understanding of the common law rules we don't we because we read this court's precedent as already recognizing a categorical hot pursuit exception in the felony context but setting that aside and focusing on the common law we do read the leading common law commentators that our founders would have looked to as exigencies exist and we think it's also settled that officers may enter a home without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe the winning suspect has committed a felony but in our view when an officer cannot make out probable cause of a felony or point to any specific harm that would result from waiting to get a warrant the constitution should reply or that officer to get the warrant that approach is the one most consistent with history unprecedented as well as respect for privacy in the home under a categorical rule by contrast police could make wireless entries based on probable cause of any missed a minor even for minor offenses like littering or loitering whenever a suspect disobeyed police and takes a few steps but the warrant requirement is subject to exceptions and hot pursuit is one of them the hostler suit exception justifies warrantless home entry and a narrow class of cases where a suspect tries to thwart a lawful public arrest outracing an officer to a dwelling this court has never suggested that the hot pursuit exception turns on the classification of the underlying offense it should now expressly holds that it does not the justification for the exception relate to the suspect flight not the nature of his initial crime officers cannot be expected to accurately classify offenses in the midst of a chase and this court's reasoning and out water which rejected a felony minor distinction for public applies of equal force here unable to defend a felony only hot pursuit rule titian are now suggests that hot pursuit is actually a distinct exception to the work requirement at all instead he claims that officers must point to as regencies other than a hot pursuit even and felony cases no court appears to have taken that view nor do any of the states on either side of this case support it for good reason pursuit exception is settled law and it protects important law enforcement interests that categorically outweighs privacy interests want to suspect decides to flee to be clear the fact that the constitution permits officers to enter homes and hospice in cases does not mean that they must always do so state and department policy can and do and that the circumstances and which officers pursue fleeing suspects but this car should not counsel a lot of your argument is focused on uncertainties you know the officers don't know why the person is fleeing they don't know what he might do in inside the house that sort of  thing and i understand that to be the basis for your support of a categorical rule but they're going to be some cases where there are there isn't really any uncertainty you know some that have been suggested the you know the group of teenagers in the empty lot drinking and drinking beer on the officer comes up and they all take off why isn't it may not be a case by case approach but i guess it's close to what the solicitor general is suggesting which is a presumption i mean do you really need to have the right of hot pursuit in the case and i have hypothesized you know no real basis for chasing the  in every case by eliminating perverse incentives for a suspect to fully fight itself can be dangerous then it always undermines the rule of law and either you take drastic can be impossible to know in the heat of the moment which case reason a teenager drinking beer is interested in escape you know it's hardly it doesn't seem to be to be something that would warrant the officer breaking into the house and by case roll because i'd better reflect the categorical balance of the end tried and it provides more guidance on the margin but it also suffers from nearly all of the same flaws there's not a doctrinal basis for it as santana and subsequent cases articulate a rule and not a presumption it's still relies on the line between felonies and misdemeanors i'm not sure which cases would be covered by it so it suffers from the same as minister felony questions and like a case by case or in cases of misdemeanors as opposed to some misdemeanors as far as i'm not sure that kate this court has ever addressed back question directly but santana's holding was framed categor suggested that some other existence he is required or that the exception is limited to a fleeing felon in other words we've never expressed we said all misdemeanors whether they are involved dangerous that there is some doubt as to whether or not common law favors you or if we think it actually does favors you what should we do like  view then it seems like the home isn't the castle at all for the most trivial of things i mean many examples i like the rabbit example i don't know why california has made it a crime to give a lot we have to do this distinction misdemeanors and felonies which is tough writing you're reading for this because you did a good job of preparing did you come across anything sort of listed draws the reasons for a hot pursuit and why it's there is a special category so you might say look hot pursuit where these reasons are there but not talk through suit to be just the regular see where the crime is minor so now defined as you come across something i could read on that just as fire unfortunately i'm not sure i have a source for you that gives a clear answer to that but i think santana itself may clear that hot pursuit only serves important law enforcement interests in particular and identifying suspects and preventing their escape and ensuring officer and r safety i know those things that's true but i mean look the rabbit case i mean it's ridiculous the policeman can just get into your house when you went inside your house because you once sold a rabbit in surprise i agree that the stones are pretty orator but i mean we can think about fifty of those when you start getting into misdemeanors it's just that it's dramatic to keep what do we do about the fifty or a one thousand or the parking you know parking tickets or all kinds of pursuit only allows officers to enter a home just as prior when the suspect makes the decision to bring up a public encounter inside a home there is a suspect can always avoid any intrusion includes the phrase a state law enforcement officers pursued the petitioner the court below tell only he met a reasonable person mr wise position would have seen the police lights and understood that the police officer was trying to stop him but there is no hole there is some finding and there's no holding that he was attempting to avoid arrest in do think in this case when the officer turned on its lights and mr lang decided not to stop but instead to pull into his garage and began closing the door that officer loitered had probable cause to arrest him for a misdemeanor and the minimal intrusion into his garage allowed him to apprehend the petitioner there without going further into the home the matter of whose perspective we look at this from the officers perspective  taking a look at this video objective lee was this some attempt to evade or rushed i think so just a silly when an officer turns on a flight and a suspect decides not to pull over but instead to enter into a garage and close the door i think whether you're talking about the reasonable officer or the reasonable suspect that is an attempt to thwart a lawful public arrest well that wasn't something that was held by the lower court that was going to stand in the lower court apply alito i think there is no dispute here that this qualified as a hot pursuit if you disagree i suppose the court could dismiss this case as improvidently granted but i don't think that that's necessary there was a hot pursuit  assuming that i find the common law unclear on the margins but i don't find it unclear that the common long by its nature allowed was for serious offenses not minor ones how can i how can we ignore that teaching of the common law and i guess i go back to justice courses use point that perhaps we should just spew to the common law more strictly as and recognize exceptions only that reflect the teachings of the common law so basis for entry were a need for entry why don't we just adopt the exception without reference to labels like f thought important to justify warrant was suturing doesn't i or i agree that the felony mesta mean our label isn't particularly helpful in this context but to answer your question about a common law if you think that kano law track some kind of distinction between breaches of the peace and other kinds of misdemeanors and as i read it out water are considered exactly that kind of distinction and client to distinguish between common law breaches of the peace and other kinds of mr mean ours and the context of public are asked and it would be pretty strange than to try to draw that line for offenders who decide to fully public arrest i think too that i'm not sure that anyone here is advocating for a breach of the peace type line instead of whether you're talking about a case by case through or a presumption that things are those that that he's innocent would seem to turn on and don't relate to that the  home the sacrosanct place the place of greatest protection everything else is compared to that and found not to be quite the thing that the th amendment protects that's the central thing do you do you disagree with that i don't  that ok so if i understand your argument the way you kind of get around that is by saying that in these hot pursuit cases the suspect makes a decision to go into the home it's almost a kind of waiver  is that what you're saying and i think the fact that the encounter begins and public and the suspect decides to bring the encounter into the home isn't relevant i don't know that i would classify it as a waiver and i don't think it fits in the framework of consent but i do think it diminishes the interest and the privacy of his home i guess what i'm thinking of is this i'm trying to see why we would make any kind of distinction between this sort of case where the encounter begins in public and then goes into the home and take another kind of case which is which is payton where where the holding of course was that the police can't enter a home to arrest a felon without a warrant or without exigent circumstances even if the felon is doing a crime right in his home so why would we distinguish between the two i think the difference between those two cases is crucial here justice kagan the point of the hot pursuit exception is that a suspect can bootstrap the privacy protections of the home onto a public arrest through culpable conduct and so the decision to flee and side i think makes 's engaged in a massive fraud and he's he's decided hey what a great idea i'm going to use my home to do this rather than my office so i mean you have the same kind of thing where the person is basically the fact that the home is protected you know in order to get greater protection and yet in pain we said doesn't matter doesn't pay and i think it's always the case you're right that a suspect decides to commit a crime and so is there culpable in that sense but changing the location of the encounter from a public space to a privacy space and then claiming sorry i mean my home is a private space he can't comment isn't that kind of conduct that the th amendment is prepared to reckon recognize as reasonable thank you ms rice justice course which miss rice you did some very careful work looking at some of the founding your sources and i'd just like to ask you were you able to locate anything that suggests that officers have the power to enter the home in pursuit of any and all misdemeanor crimes or in the estes version presumptively allowed to do so entry would not have provided a basis for overturning a conviction but also because some authorities are short debated and they just say that a warrant wasn't required to enter a house to make an arrest in the st place so th justification wouldn't have been necessary i think it's fair to say that there just wasn't a clear answer here at common law and so other d modes of constitutional analysis should control well i guess i guess i'm still stuck where i was i don't know why we would adopt a rule that's less protective than the original meaning but let me ask another question you raise concerns about an officer's ability to distinguish between felonies and misdemeanors is one reason for your rule but there's also the line between mr meters and infractions that are not jailable and if mr meters and felonies of proliferated in recent years the number of these infractions has skyrocketed none jailable traffic offenses fire code violations you choose rabbits does your rule allow an officer to enter the home for violation of a regulatory rule as well and if not why is this drawing that line to explore how much is really at stake or how much of a difference there would be between the two positions here for officers on the ground in the wake of our decision so i understand your position to be destruction of evidence danger to others a scape of the suspect i just said cuts both ways though because one can say well you don't need a categorical rule because you already have the edge in circumstances doctrine that covers all the things that justify the categor so i guess i'm wondering what the real difference in practice would be between a world where we have a categorical rule and a world where real well all the edges circumstances  interest balance thing in every case but i think then that the case by case rule is is only that prying officers and court frankly of the kind of clear rule that this court has said is particularly the th amendment it seems to me that's a different kind of term than search or seizure or cruel and unusual you know unreasonable means unreasonable so we're really talking about is not original meaning or original intent to or even  original expected application is i don't i'm not aware of anyone in the st congress or in the state ratifying prophecies that said on reasonable means the common law i'm like and the text is on like the th amendment which refers to the common law expressly on professor rule save and others have pointed this out so it's not really original meaning or even original intent it's more like a presumed original expected applications i want justice dogless style  i have a question about whether what it meant to breach the peace you know so that seems to be kind of a capacious category and there's some dispute about what would fall within it is there any argument that resisting arrest that resisting the constable would have been a there i'm not aware of any authority directly on that point though i think you're absolutely right that it's very unclear which offenses would and would not have constituted breaches of the peace that common law in fact that's one of the reasons why th and water declined to distinguish between common law breaches of the peace and other kinds of misdemeanors i assume it was a crime do you know i believe it was just this and you but you don't know whether i mean it certainly doesn't fall within one of the common law felonies so does that mean it was a misdemeanor to do to resist arrest i don't know the answer to that question but i think that common law or suspects generally have no right to resist a lawful arrest and  could be prosecuted i don't know that that was a felony it's rice let me ask you another question i thought your brief was a little bit of quizzical about whether your concepts of pursuit would require knowledge that you were being chased or not so is your rationale for this that you know someone who will the cop could have arrested the defendant in public and so the police officer can follow the defendant into the house to finish in private was started in public or is it rely on some kind of consciousness being chased this is very i think like other th amendment standards this doesn't rely on any sort of jack to knowledge but i think a reasonable person in the suspect shoes must understand that he's not free to leave it's difficult to understand even the concept of flight or santana's language around forwarding of public arrest without that kind of reasonable basis for understanding that they're not free to leave so you would can see that we would have to ask if we had rule whether the police officer whether reasonable police officer could have understood the suspect to be fleeing as opposed to just going about his business not seeing the police officer and moving into the house or out of just there and i think that's a limit on the hot that almost certainly prevented petitioner from getting away with drunk driving by refusing to heed the officers lawful order to stop so the decision below should be affirmed under any of the rules advocated here today the categorical hot pursuit ru reflects president appropriately balances law enforcement and privacy interests provides necessary guidance to officers and avoids unnecessary constitutional obligation the justifications for that rule apply to felonies and misdemeanors alike and it is exceedingly narrow in the end that categorical hot pursuit roles does nothing more and nothing less and prevent suspects from crafting the protections of the home to lawful public encounters the court should recognize at least a general presumptive rule that when a misdemeanor suspect tries to thwart a lawful public encounter by moving the encounter to a residence and officers decision to follow him is reasonable as a court recognizing mitchell versus wisconsin societal interest in enforcing the law and not rewarding fight it makes it difficult for officers to obtain a warrant and it increases the risk of destruction of evidence perhaps for a more serious offense further escape or danger to officers and the public on the other hand the suspects decision to bring a public encounter to the home diminishes any privacy interest you may have there counsel what is your understanding of the limits that apply when an officer does go into the home assuming that your position your position that he's allowed to what exactly are the limits on what he can do once he's in certainly that we think that there are three and it's not going to be a full blown search of the entire residence and there and of course the officer and his contacts and all others can't use excessive force the manner of entry must be reasonable well presumably the person who fled in lock the door because he didn't so your honor i guess i would quibble a little bit with the idea that the suspect will necessarily have locked the door i think in a case like this one you know the garage door is closing in a case like dan tanna the door was open i don't think that that was key to the analysis and i case i think there will be a  class of cases where this question actually really won't come out because it will be very clear that the officers action was reasonable when i think your ears it's a door's locked and you know break the window and get in that way so i think that will be a circumstance specific determination i think after rob pursue justice thomas and fortunately like counsel i'm not aware of a specific case on that point i do know that as others have suggested the closest analogy i think would be escape and in that case yes the common law did permit that type of entry but do you think the scape is close enough for the jury is a close enough a comparative to your honor i think the issue here is that everyone as centrally i think acknowledges that the common law does not fully answer this question and does not clearly answer this question and so i think in that situation the court should turn as ms rice said to other modes of constitutional analysis i think particularly given the water under the bridge here with respect to both santana because there is a th possibility which your words nearly always suggested and that is that we what do you think that we could say yes it's almost always existent almost always  because over almost always the police departments have rules and almost always it is a felony and almost always there is a good reason for the end but we go back to the constitution's words reasonable unreasonable i can show that it is not reasonable in the circumstance and there'd be a number of different things you bring into that and one would be the length of the of the chase was it just two steps or not another would be the type of conduct that led to the chase so if it's a rabbit type of conduct that's a pretty strong reason against allowing the chase into the house and another would be the availability of  risk of escape thought out but you point out they don't take off in a few cases they don't normally chase people for minor things but just leave it at that and say reasonable and we don't have an absolute rule we thought we could answer this here i think generally we think that when officers follow a suspect who has committed or who they have probable cause to believe has committed and misdemeanors and into a home that is going to be reasonable we follow the court's decision mitchell versus wisconsin which left open the possibility that in a suspect could in an unusual case show that his was essentially the unusual case where the normal considerations aren't at play i think that both give a sufficient guidance to officers on the beat because it's not a felony misdemeanor distinction in a meaningful sense what it really is is an understanding that this will almost always be reasonable and the officer just has to have his eye out for the truly minor case where the things that we think are normally present in hot pursuit scenarios for example a concern about the ability to identify the suspect later a concern about loss of exits where you know the officers on his own and he can secure the perimeter a concern about potential violence where none of those are at play on page forty three of the opinion i think for this court has certainly taken i'll be at not in holdings but has repeatedly noted that the stallion hot pursuit rule is if an exception and generally and isn't  part of the or or the other evidence circumstances don't necessarily need to be proved on a case by case basis and i also just think that your hypothetical i guess possible is so rare that in the felony context it makes sense to have what the state refers to as a conclusive presumption i guess i respectfully disagree justice alito i don't think it really hinges on the following misdemeanor distinction i think an officer on the beat well know that when a fast fact who he has lawfully tried to stop we that encounter he has the authority to follow him and that doesn't mean he should as a matter of policy it just means that the th amendment doesn't restrict his ability to do that and i think what we're really carving out here are the very minor offenses i think if you're fleeing from a family are are metiria to ban what the legislature has determined to be a serious  sotomayor continue to wonder why the disk in our cases should control or make from diff to make the assumption that the mere commission of any felony justifies entry into a home even in hot pursuit circumstances if the pursuit is not so hot and maybe i'm going back to what justice alito started with her earlier in saying we really do need to understand what those terms mean to decide this case and make an absolute rule your presumption it sounds like you want to make it a legal presumption and one that needs to be rebuffed by the defendant but i don't know why we would create a legal presumption mistress why don't we just speak practically and say that there are some soon circumstances where that in many here because it will make it far easier for officers on the beat to understand what is expected of them and it will also minimize the opportunity and temptation pretty dishes nd guessing of encounters that have to be because it speaks about reasonableness and an reasonable this is categorical rules seem to destroy that person that presumption of the st amendment and i don't know why we should be creating more when the common law d in my or i don't think that i mean it would be showing a court of judicial review i think the point is simply to recognize how the analysis we think properly conducted would come out in the vast majority of cases and i think this is an important point i think  a state in the misdemeanor context removed an act of light at least in everything i think ambition or perhaps not as much so today but removing a bite of clay from the analysis i think it weighs heavily on both sides of the th amendment question here and when properly conducted i think it yield the same result in almost every case and therefore we do think a presumption is warranted justice justice kagan i want to press on that a little bit ms ross a minute asked the two questions that i have about this presumption of yours is where does it come from and why is it needed on the where is it come from and we would look at th amendment law and we just don't generally see the court talking about presumptions in a couple of non majority opinions in this extremely sweet generous area of drunk driving but otherwise there's just no tradition in th amendment law of using presumptions as opposed to case by case analysis of reasonable ness and why do you need it there are plenty of doctrines that say to a police officer you know when in doubt maybe you can take a little bit more of a risk qualified immunity does that in this case there is the fact of the good faith exception lurking in the background why would you need a presumption rather than just like you should make your best shot you should you should make the call that you think is appropriate does this kagan in terms of why we think  officers need this presumption and i don't think it's because the the end result is going to come out differently i do think it's an administrator villainy issue i think in the field it is very helpful for officers to know that just as they have a conclusive presumption or an absolute rule in the felony context they generally are going to be able to follow mr minor suspects who flee into their homes i think that that reflects how the accurate balancing would turn out in most cases i also think that the reason why that's true is because the fact of the flight itself is going to implicate significant government interest in the desire not to have suspects flee and enforcement of the rule of law in the ability to identify suspects when someone my st question was rushed charged on your st question i think the best analogy that we have for you is wisconsin i take the point that there are more misdemeanor offenses than there are situations in which you encounter i passed out drunk driver but i think the methodological idea is the same which is to say that there are certain facts present in a category of cases this is that no two of the but i do think that that i'd like to return to the question i raised with ms rice earlier and one of them at any rate and that is you make a point about the difficulty of an officer's ability to distinguish between felonies and misdemeanors but there's also a line between mr manners and appreciate if you would to earlier on or i say what i think that the presumptive rule that we have set out here the logic of it certainly codify i think that the unusual case probably wouldn't be quite as unusual in that circumstance because we do think that th very minor nature of the crime not necessarily have it is classified as a matter of state law but the very minor nature of the crime might affect the ability of a dip and enter show that his initials were the unusual case so if we put that together that the fact that officers not being tested on his subjective intentions which may be nefarious but whether reasonable officer could think is he did and a hot pursuit can be pretty tough but it turns out we come pretty close good morning miss ross i think we have a couple of options here as people explore but i want to narrow it down to two and it's not going to use the word presumption but if i think there are two options here one is a categorical rule for said clear rules for officers but i wonder if the actions circumstances doctrine in other words the st option really wouldn't provide a you know not as clear rule would still a pretty clear rule for officers because the extra insert comes stances doctrine really as i see it tracks common sense these are the kinds of cases and the kinds of reasons and all circuit would do this in the st place want to go into the house without a warrant especially escape of the suspect threats to others destruction of evidence so i guess i'm not sure what is gained by a categorical rule that's you know i think it's also you can pose that question the other direction i'm not sure what's gained by not having a categor officers to know in any particular situation whether the other evidence circumstances are present one can take that into account i think in the vast majority of cases the and nearly every case in fact be an out that is going to come out to make the officers action reasonable and i think once we recognize that it makes sense to provide additional clarity to both officers and court by actively adopting either a categorical rule or a presumptive rule the one caution knows i'm a lead that only leaves the category of extreme cases one officer did not use common sense is still covered by the doctrine and that seems problematic in several people's range is that i don't think that's right at least if you   th amendment would permit this that it's necessarily what jurisdictions or even officers on their own should adopt as a matter of fact you know my question might be why you've come up with a presumptive rule rather than try to go away as appreciate your answers may not matter but yes we think that it is categorical in the felony contact i think you can think of that is in error about of all presumption by the basic point of our rule is when you put the two sides together it's really not a distinction between a felony and a misdemeanor it's just looking out for the super unusual case well then i have a methodological question about the categorical role for felonies so we're all in agreement that a common law this exception applied for felonies but you know common law the list of felonies was pretty short why do we take  and as we've pointed out again and again and again today the line between felonies and misdemeanors can seem quite arbitrary so why would we pull out as the key fact something designation at the sony why would we simply say ok for the very serious crimes that used to be felonies that common law then this rule applies but otherwise the felony misdemeanor line doesn't really have much significance here in other words why is it a felony rather than the list of particular crime that justified warrantless entry into the home a couple of reasons justice barrett the st i think would just be based on this court's precedents i think that that is how the court has read santana and i'm not sure that there was sort of an analogous felony of common law in this santana situation and i think isn't i proven to not be too much of a difficulty for the lower force again in that context i take the point that we shouldn't be sort of strictly dividing between felonies and misdemeanors and again i think our rule has the benefit of not doing that thank you you mr chief justice went out of their seat to conduct a lawful public encounter based on probable cause that a suspect has committed a misdemeanor but the suspect flees into a residence and officers decision to follow him generally will be reasonable this court has already h sides of the th amendment analysis and the difficulties it creates for officers in defining and identifying exit and other exits in circumstances in the moment and also would be difficult to administer and would in a traditional nd guessing of resist leaning too hard on a special category of hot pursuit is it puts a lot of pressure on exactly what would constitute hot pursuit and what is hot at common law she was clear that escape meant escape from a prior custodial arrest inhaling others were very precise about this for the other side to craft a rule or for the court to craft a rule about hot pursuit you have to ask questions about some other form of attempted detention like in this case good enough to trigger a hot pursuit does a suspect have to be aware of it or reasonably perceived to be aware of it does the officer have to witness the crime there be any number of other case specific questions on which circuit splits could already be seen to be peripheral aiding in  then finally you have a question of mr ability just as brian others have asked about that let me say two things one is that i officers apply the edges circumstances doctrine on a daily basis across the country and in all other circumstances and the court has never been confronted with arguments saying that is unworkable or difficult for officers to do it is actually nature of their job to consider the tell tale of a circumstance and the nd point about that is that their own policies and practices direct them to do that and even if us or general today even through the form of a presumption says that officers should be considering the totality of the circumstances so it's the other side again asking for the officer to consider something additional some sort of hot pursuit special category that would complicate matters we're asking for the officer to do exactly what they do all the time and the presumption or even worse a categorical rule would just complicate matters and justice kagan pointed out there's already a thumb on the scale of officers and other ways to give them benefit of the doubt you don't need a