Opinion ID: 4569201
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Execution of the Arrest Warrant

Text: We start with Officer Render’s conduct in executing the warrant. The Supreme Court has held that “an arrest warrant founded on probable cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within.” Payton, 445 U.S. at 603. Decisions from our court and others have debated whether Payton’s “reason to believe” language requires probable cause or some lower level of suspicion that a suspect is at a home. Compare United States v. Hardin, 539 F.3d 404, 415–16 & n.6 (6th Cir. 2008), with United States v. Pruitt, 458 F.3d 477, 482 (6th Cir. 2006); see United No. 19-5636 United States v. Baker Page 6 States v. Vasquez-Algarin, 821 F.3d 467, 474–77 (3d Cir. 2016). Yet, whether or not officers have reason to believe a suspect is inside, they generally may knock at the front door, converse with the person who answers, and enter if they obtain consent. See United States v. Wooden, 945 F.3d 498, 502 (6th Cir. 2019); cf. Fernandez v. California, 571 U.S. 292, 298 (2014). Such “[c]onsensual encounters do not lose their propriety . . . merely because they take place at the entrance of a citizen’s home.” United States v. Thomas, 430 F.3d 274, 277 (6th Cir. 2005). And police ordinarily need no suspicion for this type of “knock and talk.” See id. (citing cases). The Supreme Court has recognized, too, that “[e]very arrest must be presumed to present a risk of danger to the arresting officer.” Washington v. Chrisman, 455 U.S. 1, 7 (1982). The Court has thus held that “it is not ‘unreasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment for a police officer, as a matter of routine, to monitor the movements of an arrested person, as his judgment dictates, following the arrest.” Id. When inside a home, moreover, the police may, “as a precautionary matter and without probable cause or reasonable suspicion, look in closets and other spaces immediately adjoining the place of arrest from which an attack could be immediately launched.” Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325, 334 (1990); see also United States v. Roberts, 612 F.3d 306, 310 (5th Cir. 2010); United States v. Harness, 453 F.3d 752, 755–56 (6th Cir. 2006). The Supreme Court has also recognized that suspects routinely “flee across jurisdictional boundaries[.]” United States v. Hensley, 469 U.S. 221, 231 (1985). So the officer who executes an arrest warrant often will not be the officer who provides the affidavit seeking it. Does the Fourth Amendment impose an independent duty on the officer making the arrest to ensure that probable cause existed for the already-issued warrant? No. “Police officers who arrest a suspect based on a warrant that they did not themselves seek ‘are entitled to assume that the officers’ who did obtain the warrant ‘offered the magistrate the information requisite to support an independent judicial assessment of probable cause.’” United States v. Hewlett, 395 F.3d 458, 461 (D.C. Cir. 2005) (quoting Whiteley v. Warden, Wyo. State Penitentiary, 401 U.S. 560, 568 (1971)). True, if the warrant turns out to be invalid, the “otherwise illegal arrest cannot be insulated from challenge by the decision of the instigating officer to rely on fellow officers to make the arrest.” Whiteley, 401 U.S. at 568. But if probable cause existed for the warrant, an No. 19-5636 United States v. Baker Page 7 officer may arrest the suspect without personally learning the facts establishing probable cause. Hensley, 469 U.S. at 230–31. This “common sense” conclusion “minimizes the volume of information concerning suspects that must be transmitted to other jurisdictions and enables police in one jurisdiction to act promptly in reliance on information from another jurisdiction.” Id. at 231. How do these rules play out here? All of Officer Render’s actions were reasonable and none violated the Fourth Amendment’s Reasonableness Clause. Take the events one step at a time. Render initially learned of Baker’s address from the arrest warrant and saw a man through a window moving around the register area of the identified location. Did these facts give Render a “reason to believe” that Baker was inside? Payton, 445 U.S. at 603. We need not consider the question because the door was locked and so Render initiated a “knock and talk.” See Thomas, 430 F.3d at 277. According to Render, the man came to the door and let him into the store area of the residence in a “very welcoming” manner. Render thus gained entry through consent; he did not need to invoke the authority of the warrant. See Wooden, 945 F.3d at 502. Following his department’s standard practice, Render next learned that the man was “Mr. Baker” and asked him for his identification to verify that he was the individual listed in the warrant. These inquiries were equally reasonable to ensure that Render had the right man. As the Supreme Court has held, “[i]nterrogation relating to one’s identity or a request for identification by the police does not, by itself, constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure.” Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial Dist. Ct. of Nev., 542 U.S. 177, 185 (2004) (citation omitted). And, as the Fifth Circuit noted when an officer asked for an arrestee’s identification pursuant to “department policy,” the officer “reasonably requested identification to verify that the suspect was who he said he was.” Roberts, 612 F.3d at 311. After all, officers might open themselves up to challenge if they recklessly arrest the wrong person. Cf. Seales v. City of Detroit, 959 F.3d 235, 240 (6th Cir. 2020); Hill v. Scott, 349 F.3d 1068, 1072–73 (8th Cir. 2003). Baker then quickly left the location’s store area through a door, and Render followed him. The district court made no factual findings about whether Baker impliedly consented to Render accompanying him. We do not think it matters. By that point, Render had a reasonable basis to conclude that the man was Baker. And it thus was reasonable for Render “to monitor” No. 19-5636 United States v. Baker Page 8 Baker’s movements. Chrisman, 455 U.S. at 7. “The Supreme Court has rejected the notion that exigent circumstances are required to justify entering an area in which a person has a protected Fourth Amendment privacy right where the entry is effectuated to maintain control over someone being placed under arrest.” Roberts, 612 F.3d at 310; see Harness, 453 F.3d at 756. This case shows why. Render noted that he tries to maintain visual contact with arrestees for safety reasons: “I’m thinking firearms every time.” And where did Baker go? To a room with a rifle. After entering the back room, Officer Render soon saw the rifle and jars of marijuana. The illegality of these items was “immediately apparent” once Render discovered the marijuana and learned Baker was a felon. Horton v. California, 496 U.S. 128, 136 (1990). (Baker does not challenge Render’s question about his felon status, so we need not consider the point.) This evidence thus triggered the Fourth Amendment’s plain-view doctrine. Id. at 135–36. Indeed, Officer Render’s conduct resembles the conduct of the officer in the Supreme Court’s Chrisman decision. See 455 U.S. at 3–4. There, an officer asked to see the identification of a young person carrying alcohol who was suspected to be under 21. Id. at 3. When the suspect said he needed to go to his dorm room to get his identification, the officer accompanied him there and spotted drugs in the room. Id. at 3–4. The Court held that the officer had the right to go with the suspect and that he properly saw the drugs “in plain view.” Id. at 7. The same logic extends to this case. We recognize that Chrisman suggested that the officer had already placed the suspect under arrest when accompanying him to his dorm room. Id. at 6. But Baker offers no arguments and cites no cases suggesting that this distinction matters—at least not in a case in which the officer had an arrest warrant for the suspect he was in the process of arresting. Cf. Roberts, 612 F.3d at 311. Lastly, Officer Render did not confirm for himself the state judge’s finding that probable cause existed for the arrest warrant. He explained: “If I see a judge has signed it and found probable cause, that’s good enough for me.” The Fourth Amendment did not require him to do more. Officers executing arrest warrants need not “grade” the work of state judges by reevaluating whether they correctly found probable cause. See Hensley, 469 U.S. at 230–31. Indeed, “[a] warrant is a judicial mandate to an officer to conduct a search or make an arrest, and No. 19-5636 United States v. Baker Page 9 the officer has a sworn duty to carry out its provisions.” Utah v. Strieff, 136 S. Ct. 2056, 2062 (2016) (quoting Leon, 468 U.S. at 920 n.21). That was true in this case. The warrant “commanded” peace officers to arrest Baker. This fact does not mean one officer may “obtain a warrant on the basis of a ‘bare bones’ affidavit and then rely on colleagues who are ignorant of the circumstances under which the warrant was obtained to conduct the” arrest. Leon, 468 U.S. at 923 n.24. But the warrant’s validity addresses the second question presented by this case; it does not affect the reasonableness of Officer Render’s actions in executing the warrant. Render acted “objectively reasonably when he relied upon the police computer record” showing the warrant existed. Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 1, 16 (1995). Baker’s counterarguments do not change things. He concedes he gave consent for Render to enter his residence’s store area. But he argues that his consent did not extend to the back room where Render followed him. The arrest warrant, however, gave Render the authority to monitor Baker. Chrisman, 455 U.S. at 7. Baker responds that the warrant could not grant this authority because Render had not called his central dispatch beforehand to ensure that it remained active. Yet Render saw the warrant on Kentucky’s e-warrant system. Baker, who bore the burden of proof, presented no evidence suggesting that this e-warrant system was so riddled with errors as to make Render’s reliance on it unreasonable. Cf. Herring v. United States, 555 U.S. 135, 146 (2009); see United States v. Rodriguez-Suazo, 346 F.3d 637, 643 (6th Cir. 2003). The warrant also turned out to be active, so Render’s reliance on the system proved entirely justified in this case. All told, we see no basis to suppress the evidence from Baker’s home based on the way in which Render arrested him.