Opinion ID: 1427400
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Payton Arrest Warrants and Reason to Believe

Text: In Payton, 445 U.S. at 576, 100 S.Ct. 1371, the Supreme Court considered whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits the police from making a warrantless and non-consensual entry into a suspect's home in order to make a routine felony arrest. [D]etectives had assembled evidence sufficient to establish probable cause to believe that Theodore Payton had murdered the manager of a gas station ... [and] officers went to [his] apartment ... intending to arrest him[, but] had not obtained a warrant. Id. After breaking open the door and entering the apartment, an officer spotted a shell casing in plain view and seized it as evidence to be used against Payton at trial. Id. at 576-77, 100 S.Ct. 1371. Payton moved to suppress the shell casing on the basis that the warrantless entry was unconstitutional, but the trial court denied the motion. Id. at 577, 100 S.Ct. 1371. On direct appeal, the New York Court of Appeals reasoned: [T]here is a substantial difference between the intrusion which attends an entry for the purpose of searching the premises and that which results from an entry for the purpose of making an arrest, and a significant difference in the governmental interest in achieving the objective of the intrusion in the two instances. Id. at 579-80, 100 S.Ct. 1371 (quotation marks, editorial marks, citation, and footnote omitted). So, New York's high court upheld the warrantless entry, but the case proceeded to the United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's analysis began with a recitation of the Fourth Amendment's history, id. at 583-89, 100 S.Ct. 1371, and culminated in a direct refutation of both the New York court's holding (i.e., that no warrant was necessary) and its reasoning (i.e., because search is different from arrest): [T]he critical point is that any differences in the intrusiveness of entries to search and entries to arrest are merely ones of degree rather than kind. The two intrusions share this fundamental characteristic: the breach of the entrance to an individual's home .... In terms that apply equally to seizures of property and to seizures of persons, the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant. Id. at 589-90, 100 S.Ct. 1371. Thus, the Supreme Court held that entries to search and entries to arrest are not sufficiently different to justify dispensing with the warrant requirement altogether, and therefore, some type of warrant is necessary  indeed, virtually indispensable  in order to justify the entry into a suspect's home for purposes of effecting an arrest. But, the Court concluded its analysis by clarifying that a search warrant is not necessary; an arrest warrant will suffice: [T]he State[] suggest[s] that only a search warrant based on probable cause to believe the suspect is at home at a given time can adequately protect the privacy interests at stake, and since such a warrant requirement is manifestly impractical, there need be no warrant of any kind. We find this ingenious argument unpersuasive. It is true that an arrest warrant requirement may afford less protection than a search warrant requirement, but it will suffice to interpose the magistrate's determination of probable cause between the zealous officer and the citizen. If there is sufficient evidence of a citizen's participation in a felony to persuade a judicial officer that his arrest is justified, it is constitutionally reasonable to require him to open his doors to the officers of the law. Thus, for Fourth Amendment purposes, 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. Id. at 602-03, 100 S.Ct. 1371 (emphasis added). Thus, the Court acknowledged that an arrest warrant requirement may afford less protection than a search warrant requirement  that less protection being the absence of a determination of probable cause to believe the suspect is at home at a given time  and held that, consistent with the Fourth Amendment, an officer holding a valid arrest warrant may enter when there is reason to believe the suspect is within. Id. (emphasis added). One other aspect of the Payton opinion is noteworthy here  the Court was emphatic about the limited extent of its holding: Before addressing the narrow question presented by these appeals, we put to one side other related problems that are not presented today. Id. at 582-83, 100 S.Ct. 1371 (emphasis in original; footnote omitted). The Court identified four issues that it was expressly not deciding, including any question concerning the authority of the police, without either a search or arrest warrant, to enter a third party's home to arrest a suspect. Id. at 583, 100 S.Ct. 1371. That question was left unresolved until April 1981, when the court decided Steagald, 451 U.S. at 205-06, 101 S.Ct. 1642.