Opinion ID: 212993
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Officers' Entry into the House

Text: In Payton v. New York , the Supreme Court held that police officers attempting to execute an arrest warrant have limited authority to enter a dwelling in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is within. 445 U.S. at 603, 100 S.Ct. 1371. Payton 's two-prong inquiry thus requires us to ask whether Schaaf and Fries had a sufficient basis to believe that Daley (1) lived at 63 Menlo Street and (2) was at home at the time of their entry. The district court described the issue as close and the evidence supporting the government's position as thin. Werra, 2008 WL 4280035, at . The government itself stated at oral argument before the district court that the arrest warrant did not give the officers the authority to enter the house. [16] Nonetheless, the court concluded that a reasonable officer in the same position could have formed an objectively `reasonable belief' that Jeanine Daley lived at the premises and was present at the time of entry. Id. at . As a threshold matter, Werra argues that the court's use of the reasonable belief standard was incorrect, and that the officers instead needed to demonstrate that they had probable cause to believe that Daley lived in the Menlo Street house and was home on the morning of November 10. Although most circuits to have considered the issue have adopted the reasonable belief standard, and treat it as less stringent than probable cause, see, e.g., El Bey v. Roop, 530 F.3d 407, 416-17 (6th Cir.2008); United States v. Thomas, 429 F.3d 282, 286 (D.C.Cir.2005); Valdez v. McPheters, 172 F.3d 1220, 1224-25, 1227 n. 5 (10th Cir.1999); United States v. Lovelock, 170 F.3d 339, 343 (2d Cir.1999), the Ninth Circuit requires probable cause, see United States v. Gorman, 314 F.3d 1105, 1115 (9th Cir.2002). We have not explicitly made a choice, but have implicitly accepted the majority view. See, e.g., United States v. Graham, 553 F.3d 6, 12-14 (1st Cir.2009). In this case, the government cannot meet even the less stringent reasonable belief standard. The relevant information possessed by the officers in this case, as found by the district court, was the following: (1) an informant (Christine) told the officers that she had recently seen Daley at 63 Menlo Street and that Daley was staying there, Werra, 2008 WL 4280035, at ; (2) Christine had previously provided Schaaf with accurate information about the location of a suspect; (3) Schaaf was aware that Daley had been a drug abuser; (4) on Schaaf's previous visit to 63 Menlo Street, within the previous year, he had observed it to be a sober house with tenants living on the premises, id.; and (5) the officers arrived at the house relatively early in the morning, at approximately 10:00 a.m. id. at . We doubt that this information was sufficient to support even the first prong of the Payton inquirythat Schaaf and Fries could reasonably believe that Daley was living at 63 Menlo Street when they forced their way into the house. Although eyewitness evidence from a reliable informant that an individual was staying at a certain location might in some circumstances suffice to support a reasonable suspicion that the individual lives there, the context here does not permit such reliance on Christine's statement. In his affidavit, Schaaf reported that Christine had told the officers that at some point recentlya term that could refer to days or weeks earlier [17] she had seen Daley at the Menlo Street house. Cf. United States v. Pruitt, 458 F.3d 477, 478-79 (6th Cir.2006) (finding reasonable belief that the suspect was present where, inter alia, an anonymous caller had reported seeing him within the past few hours). A different home address appeared on the arrest warrant for Daley and, even accepting that she had stayed at the Menlo Street house recently, the officers neither conducted surveillance nor took any other steps to verify that her stay had not been temporary. If the house were a sober house, as Schaaf had been told, Daley might have passed through only briefly in an attempt to deal with her drug abuse problem. An extended stay was no more inevitable if the house were instead a haven for drug users, which Schaaf said he suspected when Ciceranoanother known drug usercame to the door. The skimpy evidence of Daley's residency at 63 Menlo Street contrasts sharply with the information available to officers in other cases raising a Payton issue. For example, in Graham, 553 F.3d at 13, a police report about a domestic incident identified the defendant as the offender and gave his address as the building where he was subsequently arrested. In addition, the officers had tried to execute the warrant at the defendant's previous address, but did not find him. Id. at 10. Similarly, in United States v. Clayton, 210 F.3d 841 (8th Cir.2000), a police record indicated the defendant lived at the address where the arrest was made. Id. at 842; see also, e.g., United States v. Jones, 523 F.3d 31, 37 (1st Cir.2008) (finding entry into hotel room lawful where hotel manager told officers that suspect had rented a particular room for three weeks, and a man detained in the parking lot told officers that suspect was then inside the suite); United States v. Pelletier, 469 F.3d 194, 197, 200-01 (1st Cir.2006) (finding entry into a motel room lawful where officers who went to defendant's home were told he was not there; defendant's girlfriend's sister said he was at a certain room at a motel; the room was registered in the sister's name; and a motel maintenance worker identified the defendant as the sole occupant of the room); Valdez, 172 F.3d at 1226-27 (finding entry justified where, among other factors, suspect had told an officer that he lived at the location and other law enforcement officers informed the entering authorities that he lived there); United States v. Risse, 83 F.3d 212, 214-16 (8th Cir.1996) (finding entry lawful where, among other factors, the defendant had told the police that she was staying at the location and the officers could contact her there). Even if the informant's tip, together with Schaaf's general impression of 63 Menlo Street, were enough to support a reasonable belief that Daley was living in the house, there was not a shred of evidence to satisfy the second Payton prongthat the officers reasonably believed she was in the house at the time they entered. As noted above, the officers made no attempt to confirm the currentness of Christine's information by, for example, conducting surveillance or placing a telephone call to the house. Cf. El Bey, 530 F.3d at 417 (noting that a review of the relevant caselaw indicates that law enforcement officers often rely on independent investigation and observations of the premises to determine whether a suspect is actually inside before entering). Although actual viewing of the suspect on the premises is not required, Valdez, 172 F.3d at 1226, the officers must point to at least some evidence suggesting that the individual named in the arrest warrant is present. See id. (citing numerous cases and various types of circumstantial evidence, including presence of a car associated with the suspect and knowledge of employment circumstances that would make it likely the suspect would be at home and asleep); see also Pruitt, 458 F.3d at 483 (same, noting that reasonable belief may be generated by consideration of common sense factors and the totality of the circumstances). The government asserts that officers should not be expected to conduct resource-draining stake-outs in order to arrest suspects at their known residences, and it correctly points out that courts regularly uphold entries where the time of day suggested the suspect's presence at home. See, e.g., Thomas, 429 F.3d at 286 (noting that the early morning hour [between 6:00 and 6:30 a.m.] was reason enough for the officers to believe the defendant would be at home); United States v. Bervaldi, 226 F.3d 1256, 1267 (11th Cir.2000) (concluding that it was reasonable to believe, in the absence of contrary evidence, that [suspect] would be at his residence at 6:00 in the morning); United States v. Terry, 702 F.2d 299, 319 (2d Cir.1983) (finding reasonable belief that suspect would be at home at 8:45 a.m. on Sunday morning); United States v. Bridgewater, 333 Fed.Appx. 470, 472 (11th Cir.2009) (holding that [e]arly morning police entry [7:00 a.m.] weighs in favor of finding that the officers reasonably believed [suspect] was inside the house). The government argues that, as in those cases, Schaaf and Fries reasonably could rely on the time of day and assume that Daley was home at 10:00 a.m. on the Friday morning they entered 63 Menlo Street. The time-of-day precedent, however, does not support the conclusion the government wishes us to draw. In the cases cited by the government and in others where timing was a factor, there was no serious question that the location of the arrest was where the defendant lived, [18] and information beyond timing frequently contributed to the officers' reasonable belief that the suspect was present. See, e.g., Valdez, 172 F.3d at 1227 (holding that midday entry was constitutional where suspect was unemployed, liked to stay out late drinking, [and] sometimes abused drugs such as heroin and cocaine); United States v. Munoz, 150 F.3d 401, 407, 411 (5th Cir.1998) (listing officers' 5:00 a.m. arrival as one factor supporting reasonable belief suspect was at home); United States v. Lauter, 57 F.3d 212, 213, 215 (2d Cir. 1995) (finding reasonable belief that suspect was in the apartment at 8:30 a.m. Monday because he was unemployed and typically slept late); United States v. Hayes, 209 Fed.Appx. 548, 551 (7th Cir. 2006) (rejecting challenge to reasonable belief that suspect would be home as frivolous where police entered at 10:00 a.m. on a weekday and the suspect was an unemployed drug addict with no car). The fact that an individual is known to live at a particular location is one sound reason to expect him or her to be there. See 2 Wayne R. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 6.1(a) (4th ed. 2004) (noting that the police need not possess `special knowledge' that the defendant is at home ... for in the absence of facts tending to show that the defendant is not at home it is reasonable to infer that he would be there). Here, however, the officers' knowledge of Daley's residence consisted only of Christine's imprecise, uncorroborated statement that Daley had recently been staying at 63 Menlo Street. Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that Daley ordinarily would be home at 10:00 a.m. on a weekday, wherever she lived. So far as the record shows, the officers had no information about whether she was employed or about her nighttime and daytime routines. Entering a home at 10:00 a.m. is significantly different from entering at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., when even working individuals can reasonably be presumed to be at home. The fact that Daley was a drug abuser possibly living in a party house or a recovering drug user living in a sober house does not reveal her employment status or inclination to sleep late. Nor does the crime for which the warrant was issueda non-violent probation violation stemming from a conviction for larceny of a motor vehiclesuggest that she was likely to be unemployed and at home. In sum, none of the factors typically considered to be evidence of a suspect's presence were part of the record here. [19] In these circumstances, the officers could not have formed a reasonable belief that Daley was at 63 Menlo Street when they forcibly entered the house. [20] The government thus got it right the first time, when it told the court that the information available to the officers was insufficient to support a reasonable belief that Daley would be inside 63 Menlo Street at the time they entered the house. Hence, the officers' entry into the foyer was unlawful and, because Werra possessed a reasonable expectation of privacy there, the illegal entry violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The firearm seized in the course of the stop-and-frisk was a fruit of that violation and, accordingly, it should have been suppressed. See Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 484-85, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963); United States v. Sanchez, 612 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir. 2010). We hasten to add that we are not suggesting that officers who unlawfully enter a home must subject themselves to the risk of being harmed by a resident whom they believe is armed and dangerous. They are certainly entitled to take reasonable actions to defend themselves. [21] But the reasonableness of the officers' interaction with such an individual for that protective purpose does not determine the Fourth Amendment suppression issue generated by the unlawful entry. In this case, because Werra had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the foyer and the officers entered the house unlawfully, the officers' encounter with Werra and the discovery of the gun were both results of the officers' unconstitutional conduct. Werra was thus entitled to suppression of the gun. We therefore reverse the district court's denial of Werra's motion to suppress, vacate Werra's conviction, and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. So ordered.