Opinion ID: 2576420
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: exigent circumstances doctrine

Text: ¶ 28 We next turn to the question of whether the officers' intrusion was justified as a law enforcement activity undertaken pursuant to exigent circumstances. The level of harm necessary to invoke the emergency aid doctrine clearly satisfies the exigent circumstances standard. See United States v. Holloway, 290 F.3d 1331, 1337 (11th Cir. 2002) ([W]e conclude emergency situations involving endangerment to life fall squarely within the exigent circumstances exception.). The question we confront here, however, is whether some lesser actual or threatened harm than that required to justify an emergency aid intrusion will support a warrantless search based on exigent circumstances and, if it can, whether the conduct which stimulated the Brigham City officers to enter the residence meets this standard. We conclude that although the range of actual or imminent injury that will support an exigent circumstances intrusion is more expansive than that available under the emergency aid doctrine, the court of appeals correctly held that exigent circumstances did not justify the Brigham City officers' warrantless intrusion. [4] ¶ 29 The primary rationale for permitting police officers greater latitude in justifying an exigent circumstances intrusion than an emergency aid intrusion flows from the different role assumed by officers acting in the face of exigent circumstances. Officers who act in the face of exigent circumstances are pursuing a law enforcement mission, not acting as caretakers. Although this classification scheme is artificial and simplistic, representing just two of many roles that trained police officers integrate confidently and intuitively in their professional lives, it does provide a useful tool to help understand and evaluate warrantless intrusions. It is the presence or absence of probable cause that gives analytical direction to whether a police officer entering a home without a warrant has done so as a caretaker under the emergency aid doctrine or in a law enforcement capacity under the exigent circumstances standard. ¶ 30 To justify a warrantless entry based on exigent circumstances, a reasonable person must believe that the entry was necessary to prevent physical harm to the officers or other persons. Beavers, 859 P.2d at 18. This standard demands a lesser degree of harm or threat of harm than that necessary to invoke the emergency aid doctrine. The distinction between the approaches to harm taken by the emergency aid and exigent circumstances doctrines is evident from the inclusion of officer safety as a consideration in passing judgment on an entry justified as an exigent circumstance. An officer who acts in a caretaker capacity when providing emergency aid is not likely to expose himself to the risk of harm. The sole consideration is the well being of persons inside a dwelling who are entitled to privacy, but who also may be in dire need of aid. ¶ 31 The same cannot be said for the officer faced with probable cause that a crime has been committed. Officer safety is of concern whenever an officer acts in his law enforcement role. The degree of potential harm to an officer that is necessary to create an exigent circumstance is minimal, reflecting the high value we place on the security of peace officers. See State v. James, 2000 UT 80, ¶ 10 n. 3, 13 P.3d 576 (citing Knowles v. Iowa, 525 U.S. 113, 117-18, 119 S.Ct. 484, 142 L.Ed.2d 492 (1998)) (noting that the threat to an officer's safety in a routine traffic stop is significantly less than in a custodial arrest, but nevertheless high enough to merit asking the driver to step out of the vehicle). ¶ 32 The safety of the Brigham City officers is not at issue here. The sole justification for the warrantless entry was the safe-guarding of the inhabitants of the dwelling. The rationale for the reduced quantum of harm necessary to justify an exigent circumstance intrusion for the officer does not extend to the inhabitants of a home. Our respect for officer safety flows from our recognition of the dangers inherent in law enforcement. However, the license extended to law enforcement to protect themselves from harm does not apply when the other persons covered by the Beavers articulation of the exigent circumstances standard are the inhabitants of a dwelling. Unlike law enforcement officers, the inhabitants own the right to be free in their homes from unreasonable searches and seizures. They may well choose to expose themselves to greater actual or potential harm to preserve their right to be left alone in their homes. They may even engage in acts that meet the legal definition of assault, thereby creating probable cause, but that nevertheless do not create an exigent circumstance authorizing a warrantless intrusion. ¶ 33 Although linked in the Beavers formulation of exigent circumstances, law enforcement officers and inhabitants of dwellings do not share the same threshold of harm necessary to justify a warrantless entry based on exigent circumstances because each possesses different and distinct interests. To the inhabitant of a dwelling who, unlike the law enforcement officer, does not face the reality of danger as a constant workday presence, the warrantless intrusion of a law enforcement officer may be an unwelcome invasion of privacy, even if the inhabitant has sustained an injury. Consequently, the difference between the quantum of harm necessary to invoke the emergency aid and exigent circumstances doctrines is greatest when probable cause is present and a law enforcement officer is exposed to risk, but is of lesser magnitude when the threat of harm is to the inhabitant of the dwelling. ¶ 34 Here the Brigham City officers entered the home after witnessing four adults attempt to restrain a juvenile, the juvenile break a hand free and strike an adult in the face, and the adults struggle to regain control of the juvenile. When, after entering the kitchen of the house, the officer gained the attention of its occupants the altercation abated. It was the acknowledged presence of the authority of the police that quenched the heat in the kitchen. ¶ 35 The degree of harm suffered by the adult victim of the juvenile's blow certainly nudges the line of that degree of harm sufficient to create an exigent circumstance. The restraint of the juvenile by the adults, both before and after the blow was struck, is less worthy of justifying an exigent circumstance, but underscores the reality that this case presents us with a close and difficult call. The efforts by the adults to control the juvenile certainly met the legal definition of an assault. If all that were required to authorize a warrantless entry into a home was probable cause that an assault of any severity whatsoever had occurred within the dwelling, the exigent circumstance component of the doctrine would disappear, subsumed within the probable cause requirement. [5] The record reveals that the police officers heard the adults couple their efforts to physically restrain the juvenile with demands that he calm down. The scene that played out before the officers prior to their entry into the kitchen was one in which the unanswered question was not whether the occupants of the kitchen were going to escalate the violence but instead whether the adults would be successful in accomplishing their goal of subduing the juvenile. ¶ 36 It is reasonable to believe that while still outside the house the police officers understood that a display of official authority would likely have the desired effect of restoring peace. That is in fact what occurred after the police entered the house. The spreading awareness of police presence ended the confrontation between the adults and the juvenile. As noted by the trial court, the officers made no attempt to knock before entering. While the trial court noted further that owing to the noise and tumult in the kitchen a knock probably would not have been heard, the officers nevertheless gave no thought to the constitutional implications associated with where they announced their presence. On the July night of the incident, only a screen door separated the officers from the kitchen. We are left to speculate, although our foray into speculation is appropriate here, whether the officers could have achieved the two-fold objective of quelling the disturbance by making their presence known and honoring the constitutional integrity of the dwelling. ¶ 37 Our task is to pass judgment on whether the intrusion was reasonable taking into account all the circumstances. Pennsylvania v. Mimms, 434 U.S. 106, 109, 98 S.Ct. 330, 54 L.Ed.2d 331 (1977) (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 19, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)). When it singled out for criticism the officers' failure to knock in advance of entering the dwelling, the trial court was not attempting to balance its ruling atop a slender and fragile legal technicality. It was, instead, securing its decision to the sturdier foundation of the deeply rooted constitutional and statutory [6] dignity afforded a dwelling. We therefore agree with the court of appeals and the trial court that the Brigham City officers entered the dwelling without aid of an exigent circumstance. ¶ 38 In considering the exigent circumstances doctrine, the court of appeals split over the applicability of its opinion in State v. Comer, 2002 UT App 219, 51 P.3d 55, to the Brigham City intrusion. Stuart, 2002 UT App 317, 57 P.3d 1111. In Comer, police officers responded to a citizen's report of a domestic fight. Comer, 2002 UT App 219 at ¶ 2, 51 P.3d 55. A female occupant of the residence answered the officers' knock on the door. Id. The occupant stepped onto the porch, where the officers explained why they were there. Id. After telling the officers that her husband was inside the home, the occupant immediately turned and walked back inside the residence. Id. The officers followed and came upon the husband who had scratch marks on his upper body. Id. at ¶ 3. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court's finding of exigent circumstances. Id. at ¶ 27. ¶ 39 Judge Bench's dissent in Stuart found Comer to be controlling. Stuart, 2002 UT App 317 at ¶ 17, 57 P.3d 1111. The majority limited Comer's reach to domestic violence situations. Id. at n. 2. Judge Bench found this to be an unsatisfying distinguishing characteristic. Id. at ¶ 20. According to him, it makes little sense to hold police officers to a dual standard, barring an intrusion into a home when conduct amounting to an assault occurs between persons who do not meet the definition of cohabitants, but permitting it when they do. Id. He implies that since assaultive conduct within a home will frequently be accompanied by ambiguity over its status as domestic violence, all assaults which occur within a home should be presumed to be between cohabitants and therefore police officers who respond to them should be entitled to access the home under the exigent circumstance analysis which sanctioned the intrusion in Comer. Id. [7] ¶ 40 Although we express no view on whether Comer was correctly decided, we note the Fourth Amendment protections afforded a dwelling and the unquestioned evils of domestic violence are powerful forces pulling a police officer standing on the threshold of a home in opposite directions: the Fourth Amendment pushing him toward a magistrate and a warrant, domestic violence drawing him through the door to intervene in one of the most common and volatile settings for serious injury or death. We are wary of making sweeping pronouncements in the face of these important, but contradictory, concerns. We also decline to signal our approval for any categorical extension of the exigent circumstances which would permit a warrantless entry into a home, even where to do so may prove beneficial in controlling the scourge of domestic violence, because a categorical extension would unduly threaten the special protection the Fourth Amendment bestows on people in their homes. ¶ 41 Moreover, Comer differs factually from this case in one significant respect not addressed by the court of appeals. The single fact that tipped the balance in favor of concluding that the Comer intrusion was reasonable and justified as an exigent circumstance was the abrupt and unexplained re-entry into the home by the female occupant after she had been made aware of the fact of and purpose for the police officers' presence at her home. See 2002 UT App 219 at ¶ 26, 51 P.3d 55 (noting that the female occupant's re-entry may have indicated to the officers that any number of situations was about to occur, including the continuation of the altercation or an attempt to cover up evidence). The court of appeals surmised that the female's odd behavior reasonably heightened the officers' suspicions that her retreat into the dwelling would be followed by the commission of a domestic assault. Id. In contrast, the officers in this case could not assess whether assaultive behavior would continue after their presence was made known to the occupants of the dwelling before entering the kitchen because they made no effort to announce their presence. ¶ 42 In Mincey, the United States Supreme Court struck down Arizona's murder scene exception  a per se rule permitting warrantless searches whenever a homicide is committed. 437 U.S. at 395, 98 S.Ct. 2408 ([A] warrantless search . . . [was] not constitutionally permissible simply because a homicide had recently occurred.); see also Payton, 445 U.S. at 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371 (exigent circumstances required to cross threshold into home despite state statute authorizing warrantless entry to make felony arrests). More recently, the Supreme Court has explained that we have treated reasonableness as a function of the facts of cases so various that no template is likely to produce sounder results than examining the totality of circumstances in a given case; it is too hard to invent categories without giving short shrift to details that turn out to be important in a given instance, and without inflating marginal ones. United States v. Banks, 540 U.S. 31, 36, 124 S.Ct. 521, 157 L.Ed.2d 343 (2003) (discussing reasonableness in execution of search warrants). ¶ 43 Similarly, in Comer, the Utah Court of Appeals decline[d] to adopt a rule whereby a reliable domestic disturbance report, by itself, would be viewed as supporting a warrantless entry based on a presumed serious physical injury. Comer, 2002 UT App 219 at ¶ 20, 51 P.3d 55. Although a serious crime, domestic violence reports run the whole range from simply having a verbal argument to severe violence. Id. at ¶ 5. Furthermore, Utah law permits officers to use all reasonable means they may deem  reasonably necessary to provide for the safety of the victim and any family or household member where domestic violence is apparent. Utah Code Ann. § 77-36-2.1(1)(a) (2003) (emphasis added). Thus, even in instances of domestic violence, police are required to assess the situation and conform their actions to a standard of reasonableness, entering only when an exigency is present. See Comer, 2002 UT App 219 at ¶ 27 n. 11, 51 P.3d 55 (the police can effectively address the volatility of domestic disputes through the existing exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement (emphasis added)); see also United States v. Davis, 290 F.3d 1239, 1244 (10th Cir.2002) ([W]e hold an officer's warrantless entry of a residence during a domestic call is not exempt from the requirement of demonstrating exigent circumstances.); State v. Frankel, 179 N.J. 586, 847 A.2d 561 (2004) (rejecting per se rule permitting warrantless entry on basis of a 911 hang-up call); Commonwealth v. Kiser, 48 Mass.App.Ct. 647, 724 N.E.2d 348, 351 (2000) (loud party is not the sort of riotous behavior that justified entry under the statute which was intended to permit entry for breach of peace). ¶ 44 We are also unwilling to replace the reasonableness requirement with a per se rule concerning domestic violence that disregards other factors in the totality of the circumstances. Our rejection of a rule that would grant a suspicion of domestic violence the status of a per se exigent circumstance does not render considerations of domestic violence irrelevant. Just as it would be unwise to permit factors bearing on domestic violence to sweep aside other relevant considerations when applying a totality of the circumstances assessment, it would be likewise improper to dismiss the domestic violence as a factor which could contribute to a finding of exigent circumstances. There was no finding that any of the parties to the altercation in the Brigham City home were cohabitants, and therefore, domestic violence considerations have no place in the evaluation of whether exigent circumstances justified the intrusion. ¶ 45 The decision of the court of appeals is affirmed. ¶ 46 Chief Justice DURHAM and Justice PARRISH concur in Justice NEHRING's opinion.