Opinion ID: 4766420
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiffs’ Unlawful Entry Claim

Text: 1. Violation of Plaintiffs’ Fourth Amendment Rights The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . .” U.S. Const. amend IV. “Although the text of the Fourth Amendment does not specify when a search warrant must be obtained, [the Supreme] Court has inferred that a warrant must generally be secured.” Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 459 (2011). The Supreme Court has also explained that the “physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 585–86 (1980) (quoting United States v. U.S. Dist. Ct., 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972)); see also Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1, 6 (2013) (“[W]hen it comes to the Fourth Amendment, the home is first among equals. At the Amendment’s ‘very core’ stands ‘the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.”’ (quoting Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511 (1961))). Therefore, “[i]t is a ‘basic principle of Fourth Amendment law’ that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable.” Payton, 445 U.S. at 586 (quoting Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 477 (1971)). But “the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit all unwelcome intrusions ‘on private property,’—only ‘unreasonable’ ones.” Caniglia v. Strom, 141 S. Ct. 1596, 1599 (2021) (quoting Jardines, 569 U.S. at 6). Accordingly, even for searches and seizures within a home, “the warrant requirement is subject to certain exceptions.” Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 403. “One well-recognized exception applies when ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that [a] warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” King, 563 U.S. at 460 (quoting Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 394 (1978)). “The exception enables law enforcement officers to handle ‘emergenc[ies]’— situations presenting a ‘compelling need for official action and no time to secure a warrant.”’ Lange v. California, 141 S. Ct. 2011, 2017 (2021) (quoting Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373, 402 (2014); Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141, 149 (2013)). “One exigency obviating the requirement of a warrant is the need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 15 with such injury.” Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 403. “Accordingly, law enforcement officers may enter a home without a warrant to render emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent injury.” Id. (citing Mincey, 437 U.S. at 392); see also Caniglia, 141 S. Ct. at 1599. “To determine whether a law enforcement officer faced an emergency that justified acting without a warrant, this Court looks to the totality of circumstances.” McNeely, 569 U.S. at 149 (citing Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 406). The “‘emergency aid exception’ does not depend on the officers’ subjective intent or the seriousness of any crime they are investigating when the emergency arises.” Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 47 (2009) (per curiam) (citing Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 404–05). Rather, “it requires only an objectively reasonable basis for believing that a person within the house is in need of immediate aid.” Id. (cleaned up). And “the factspecific nature of the reasonableness inquiry[], demands that we evaluate each case of alleged exigency based on its own facts and circumstances.” McNeely, 569 U.S. at 150 (internal quotations and citations omitted); see also Lange, 141 S. Ct. at 2018. The parties agree that Defendants made a warrantless entry into Plaintiffs’ home.5 They also agree that the constitutionality of Defendants’ entry turns on whether there was an exigent circumstance—specifically, the emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement. Thus, at the first prong of the qualified immunity analysis, to determine whether the entry was permitted under the Fourth Amendment, the inquiry focuses on whether, at the time of the entry, Defendants had an objectively reasonable basis for believing than an occupant of the apartment was “seriously injured or threatened with such injury.” Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 403. Under Plaintiffs’ version of the facts, we hold that a reasonable juror could find that they did not. To start, Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), demonstrates that the anonymous tip alone did not provide such an objectively reasonable basis. In J.L., “an anonymous caller reported to the Miami–Dade Police that a young black male standing at a particular bus stop and 5Because Williams was “an overnight guest” in Mitchell’s home, Defendants do not dispute that he had a “legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s home,” and, accordingly, that both Plaintiffs have standing to assert a Fourth Amendment unlawful entry claim. Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91, 98 (1990); see also Watson v. Pearson, 928 F.3d 507, 511 (6th Cir. 2019). For ease of reference, we refer to “Plaintiffs’ home.” No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 16 wearing a plaid shirt was carrying a gun.” Id. at 268. Responding officers saw a young man matching the description at the bus stop but, “[a]part from the tip, the officers had no reason to suspect . . . illegal conduct.” Id. Nonetheless, the officers stopped and frisked the man. See id. In the context of whether the anonymous call provided reasonable suspicion, pursuant to Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), for police to seize the man in public, the Supreme Court explained that “an anonymous tip alone seldom demonstrates the informant’s basis of knowledge or veracity.” Id. at 270 (quoting Alabama v. White, 496 U.S. 325, 329 (1990)). Only when an “anonymous tip [is] suitably corroborated” does it “exhibit[] ‘sufficient indicia of reliability to provide reasonable suspicion to make the investigatory stop.”’ Id. (quoting White, 496 U.S. at 327). Otherwise, “any person seeking to harass another [could] set in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person simply by placing an anonymous call.” Id. at 272. Accordingly, even though “[t]here really was a young black male wearing a plaid shirt at the bus stop,” the J.L. Court explained that the anonymous tip was not suitably corroborated because “[t]he anonymous call concerning J.L. provided no predictive information and therefore left the police without means to test the informant’s knowledge or credibility.” Id. at 271. In this case, the caller remained completely anonymous. J.L. therefore establishes that the anonymous tip alone was not sufficient to justify a warrantless entry into Plaintiffs’ home. To be sure, J.L. indicated that certain dangerous circumstances, such as “a report of a person carrying a bomb,” “might be so great as to justify a search even without a showing of reliability.” Id. at 273. But the Supreme Court also explained that the level of Fourth Amendment protection assigned to the “quarters” matters. Id. at 274. And “the privacy interest at issue here is much greater than in J.L.” because “Defendants here relied on the anonymous 911 call to justify an invasion of the sanctity of a private dwelling ordinarily afforded the most stringent Fourth Amendment protection.” Kerman v. City of New York, 261 F.3d 229, 236 (2d Cir. 2001) (cleaned up); see also Schreiber v. Moe, 596 F.3d 323, 330 (6th Cir. 2010) (declining to decide whether an anonymous call alone can provide the requisite indicia of exigency to enter a home No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 17 because police corroborated the call). Thus, something more than just the anonymous call was needed to allow Defendants to enter Plaintiffs’ home without a warrant.6 However, before entering Plaintiffs’ home, Defendants learned that the anonymous caller had retracted her identification of Apartment 103 as the site of the alleged disturbance. In the anonymous caller’s second conversation with the 911 operator, she relayed that she was no longer “positive what apartment it was coming from.” (R. 22-3 at 8:13–8:17.) Accordingly, the basis for Defendants’ warrantless entry—the reason why Defendants arrived at the apartment building and sought entry into Apartment 103—became less certain before they entered Plaintiffs’ home. Even accepting the veracity of the anonymous caller’s tip, the totality of the anonymous caller’s two calls merely alleged that there had been a disturbance in an unknown area in the building. Moreover, when Defendants eventually entered Plaintiffs’ home, the anonymous caller’s initial identification of Apartment 103 was insufficiently corroborated. The only potentially positive indicium of the anonymous tip’s reliability was the broken glass. The anonymous caller mentioned hearing glass breaking, and broken glass from a window was found outside of Apartment 103. But viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, the broken window neither corroborated the identification of Apartment 103 nor provided an independent objectively reasonable basis to believe that someone within the apartment was seriously injured or threatened with serious injury. As explained above, only the outer glass pane was broken; the inner pane was intact. Likewise, Mitchell claimed that the person who had broken the outer pane had run away. Therefore, the broken outer windowpane did not provide a basis for Defendants to enter Plaintiffs’ home without a warrant. At most, the broken window corroborated the combined allegation from the two anonymous calls—that there had been a disturbance in an unknown location in the building. 6See Kerman, 261 F.3d at 236 (holding that an anonymous call alone is not enough to demonstrate an exigent circumstance); Chamberlain Est. of Chamberlain v. City of White Plains, 960 F.3d 100, 111–12 (2d Cir. 2020) (same); Storey v. Taylor, 696 F.3d 987, 996 (10th Cir. 2012) (holding that an anonymous caller’s “report of a loud argument—without more—that has ceased by the time an officer arrives, although relevant to the exigent circumstances inquiry, does not alone create exigent circumstances to justify a warrantless arrest”); see also Johnson v. City of Memphis, 617 F.3d 864, 869 (6th Cir. 2010) (explaining that “the combination of a 911 hang call,” which demonstrates that someone from within the home had sought emergency services, “an unanswered return call, and an open door with no response from within the residence is sufficient to satisfy the exigency requirement”). No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 18 Furthermore, a reasonable juror could find that the remaining information available to Defendants indicated that there was no emergency within Apartment 103. Although the anonymous caller mentioned screaming coming from Apartment 103, when Defendants arrived on the scene, while they also heard a woman scream, they thought they heard the screaming coming from a different apartment. Fegreus can be heard on the recording saying “we don’t think it’s coming from 103. We walked in, we heard yelling . . . . They’re gonna check up there. [Elliott] thought he heard it upstairs.” (R. 22-3 at 3:53–4:06.) And despite standing outside Plaintiffs’ apartment for about eight minutes, Defendants did not hear any signs of a disturbance within. In fact, Fegreus called dispatch to confirm the reported apartment number because, as he reported to dispatch, “it’s locked, and there’s no answer and it’s all quiet.” (Id. at 6:23–6:27.) Nor did Defendants witness anything suspicious when they looked through the window to Apartment 103. Thus, the screaming from another apartment, the silence from Apartment 103, and the anonymous caller’s inconsistent identification with respect to Apartment 103, together would allow a reasonable juror to conclude that if there was a disturbance in the building, it was not in Plaintiffs’ home. Additionally, police dispatch told Defendants that the “anonymous caller believes that the door to that apartment was kicked in before the screaming started.” (R. 23-2 at 4:20–4:30.) One would expect to see some signs of forced entry on a door that had been kicked in. But Defendants determined that there was “no sign of forced entry to the front door” of Apartment 103. (R. 23-5 at PageID# 598.) Compounded by the screaming coming from a different apartment, the silence emanating from Plaintiffs’ home, and the anonymous caller’s retraction, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, the lack of corroboration of the alleged forced entry indicated that the disturbance, if real, may have taken place in a different apartment. Defendants argue that “[o]ther circumstances also alerted the Defendants to a potential danger inside Apt. 103, and add up to probable cause.” (Appellants Br. at 51.) They argue that the amount of time it took for Mitchell to open the door, as well as Mitchell only opening the door slightly and using her knee to prevent them from opening it further, indicated danger within the apartment. However, Mitchell exercising her Fourth Amendment rights can hardly be No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 19 grounds for police to circumvent the core right protected by the Amendment. See King, 563 U.S. at 469–470 (“When law enforcement officers who are not armed with a warrant knock on a door . . . the occupant has no obligation to open the door or to speak. . . . And even if an occupant chooses to open the door and speak with the officers, the occupant need not allow the officers to enter the premises and may refuse to answer any questions at any time.”); see also Lange, 141 S. Ct. at 2018 (‘“Freedom’ in one’s own ‘dwelling is the archetype of the privacy protection secured by the Fourth Amendment . . . .”’ (quoting Payton, 445 U.S. at 587)); Hopkins v. Bonvicino, 573 F.3d 752, 765 (9th Cir. 2009) (“The mere fact that Hopkins did not answer the door cannot tip the balance in the officers’ favor, since nothing requires an individual to answer the door in response to a police officer’s knocking.”). Defendants’ remaining arguments run the gamut from relying on dispatch indicating that the “conduct” needed “immediate attention” to claiming that they had an objectively reasonable basis to believe that there was an emergency because only a woman opened the door even though there had been reports of a man and a woman screaming. (Appellants Br. at 51.) But as explained above, by the time they entered Apartment 103, the information known to Defendants would allow a reasonable juror to find that the officers did not have a reasonable basis to think that there had been a disturbance in Apartment 103. The Supreme Court cases relied upon by Defendants—Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398 (2006), and Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45 (2009)—confirm the lack of an exigent circumstance in this case. In Brigham City, “[t]he officers were responding, at 3 o’clock in the morning, to complaints about a loud party.” 547 U.S. at 406. When they arrived at the house, they heard “an altercation occurring, some kind of a fight.” Id. People were yelling “stop, stop” and “get off me.” Id. Because the “noise seemed to be coming from the back of the house; after looking in the front window and seeing nothing, the officers proceeded around back to investigate further.” Id. From the back of the house, the officers were able to see inside. See id. Specifically, they saw a child, “fists clenched, [who] was being held back by several adults.” Id. They then saw the child “break[] free and strike[] one of the adults in the face, sending the adult to the sink spitting blood.” Id. “The other adults continued to try to restrain the juvenile, pressing him up against a refrigerator with such force that the refrigerator began moving across No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 20 the floor.” Id. at 401. “At this point,” an officer entered the home without a warrant. Id. “In these circumstances,” the Supreme Court explained, “the officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing both that the injured adult might need help and that the violence in the kitchen was just beginning.” Id. at 406. Similarly, in Fisher, when responding “to a complaint of a disturbance” at a residence where a man was “going crazy,” officers “found a household in considerable chaos: a pickup truck in the driveway with its front smashed, damaged fenceposts along the side of the property, and three broken house windows, the glass still on the ground outside.” 558 U.S. at 45–46. Officers also saw “blood on the hood of the pickup and on clothes inside of it, as well as on one of the doors to the house.” Id. at 46. Inside the house, through a window, the officers saw a man with “a cut on his hand . . . screaming and throwing things.” Id. An officer then entered the house without a warrant. See id. The Supreme Court held that “the emergency aid exception, as in Brigham City, dictates that the officer’s entry was reasonable.” Id. at 48. In both cases, the Supreme Court explained, (1) the police officers “were responding to a report of a disturbance,” (2) “when they arrived on the scene they encountered a tumultuous situation in the house,” and (3) “the officers could see violent behavior inside.” Id. By contrast, while Defendants were similarly responding to a report of a disturbance, when they arrived on the scene, there was no indication of a tumultuous situation in Plaintiffs’ home and Defendants did not witness any violent behavior inside the apartment. Furthermore, as explained above, by the time Defendants entered Plaintiffs’ apartment, there was ample reason to doubt the report of the disturbance. The anonymous caller had explained that she was no longer certain which apartment she had heard the screaming coming from. Officers heard screaming coming from another apartment. The officers who had looked through the window had not seen any signs of a disturbance. There were no signs of a forcible entry. And Mitchell had told Defendants that there was no disturbance in the apartment. Thus, Brigham City and Fisher demonstrate that a reasonable juror could conclude that Defendants lacked an objectively reasonable basis for relying on the emergency aid exception to enter Plaintiffs’ home without a warrant. No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 21 Defendants also point to two Sixth Circuit cases. Again, both are unavailing. In Thacker v. City of Columbus, we summarized the information available to the officers when they made the decision to enter a home without a warrant: Someone had placed a 911 call reporting an emergency—a cutting or stabbing— at the residence. [Plaintiff] Thacker answered the door shirtless, with blood on his legs and boxer shorts. It was apparent that Thacker himself was injured, as the officers could see that he was bleeding from a cut on his hand. The cut was deep enough to require stitches, but Thacker had wrapped his shirt around his hand to slow the profuse bleeding. Immediately, Thacker acted belligerently and used profanity. He appeared intoxicated. Thacker failed to provide any explanation for the injury. Instead, he demanded assistance from the paramedics, who were waiting outside for the officers to tell them that it was safe to enter. “When the door was opened,” Officer Stack could see the kitchen area, including the kitchen table, to the right and the main living room area to the left. In the kitchen, he could see a broken beer bottle on the floor, a hole in the kitchen wall a “couple feet off the floor,” and liquid splashed on the wall and spilled on the floor. 328 F.3d 244, 254 (6th Cir. 2003). We explained that, while it was a “close question, . . . the dual needs of safeguarding the paramedics while tending to Thacker’s injury, created exigent circumstances.” Id. If Thacker, where police saw a person bleeding profusely from a deep wound, there were signs of “an altercation or an accident” in the home, and there was a need to protect the paramedics from a person whose “demeanor and attitude indicated” that he “could have posed a threat to the[ir] safety,” was a “close call,” a reasonable juror could surely conclude that there was no exigent circumstance here where Defendants saw absolutely no signs of danger to anyone. Id. at 255. Finally, this case bears little resemblance to Stricker v. Township of Cambridge, 710 F.3d 350 (6th Cir. 2013). There, a mother “called 911 from her residence to report that her [son] had ‘overdosed on some kind of drugs.”’ Id. at 354. Officers on the scene knew that the son was a “heroin user” from prior incidents, the father told them that the son “was not well,” and they saw that the son “could not focus, did not appear alert, and was unable to stand on his own.” Id. at 360–61. We held that “[a]ll of these facts served to confirm the reported drug overdose” and made it “objectively reasonable for the officers to believe a medical exigency existed when they had affirmative evidence that someone in the home needed immediate aid.” Id. at 361. Unlike in Stricker, Defendants arrived on the scene due to an anonymous call and the information No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 22 possessed by Defendants provided no indication that anyone in Plaintiffs’ home required immediate medical attention. Thus, Stricker does not support Defendants’ cause. In sum, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to Plaintiffs, a reasonable juror could find that Defendants’ warrantless entry into Plaintiffs’ home was unconstitutional. See Carlson v. Fewins, 801 F.3d 668, 676 (6th Cir. 2015) (“Longstanding precedent in this circuit leaves the factual question of exigent circumstances to the jury in a civil case.”). 2. Clearly Established Right At the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis, Plaintiffs bear the burden of showing that Defendants’ unconstitutional conduct violated clearly established law. See Barton, 949 F.3d at 950. “A Government official’s conduct violates clearly established law when, at the time of the challenged conduct, the contours of a right are sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 741 (2011) (cleaned up). “To be clearly established, a legal principle must have a sufficiently clear foundation in then-existing precedent.” District of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018). There does not need to be “a case directly on point, but existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Ashcroft, 563 U.S. at 741 (citing Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 (1987)). “The ‘clearly established’ standard also requires that the legal principle clearly prohibit the officer’s conduct in the particular circumstances before him.” Wesby, 138 S. Ct. at 590. The Supreme Court has “repeatedly stressed that courts must not ‘define clearly established law at a high level of generality, since doing so avoids the crucial question whether the official acted reasonably in the particular circumstances that he or she faced.’” Id. (quoting Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765, 779 (2014)). “A rule is too general if the unlawfulness of the officer’s conduct ‘does not follow immediately from the conclusion that [the rule] was firmly established.”’ Id. (quoting Anderson, 483 U.S. at 641). But “there can be the rare ‘obvious case,’ where the unlawfulness of the officer’s conduct is sufficiently clear even though existing precedent does not address similar circumstances.” Id. (quoting Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 199 (2004)); see also Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002). “Thus, when ‘no No. 20-1996 Williams, et al. v. Maurer, et al. Page 23 reasonable . . . officer could have concluded’ that the challenged action was constitutional, the Supreme Court has held that there does not need to be a case directly on point.” Moderwell, 997 F.3d at 660 (quoting Taylor v. Riojas, 141 S. Ct. 52, 53 (2020)); see also McCoy v. Alamu, 141 S. Ct. 1364 (2021). In Barton v. Martin, we considered whether the emergency aid exception applied to a situation where an officer made a warrantless entry into a home based on information about “a suspect who possibly shot a stray cat, but ha[d] denied doing so, and [was] inside his home but cooperating with police.” 949 F.3d at 948. After concluding that the officer’s warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment, we explained that “it was clearly established that warrantless entry into a home without an exception to the warrant requirement violated clearly established law.” Id. at 949 (citing Armstrong v. City of Melvindale, 432 F.3d 695, 700 (6th Cir. 2006)). Because there was “not an exigent circumstance posing a risk to the safety of the officers or bystanders,” we held that “bedrock Fourth Amendment principles . . . demonstrate that [the officer’s] forced warrantless entry into [the plaintiff’s] home was presumptively unreasonable, and [the officer] had no objectively reasonable basis for believing the warrantless entry was supported by exigent circumstances. Therefore, [the officer] is not entitled to qualified immunity on the unlawful entry claim.” Id. The same is true here. As explained above, accepting Plaintiffs’ version of the facts, a reasonable jury could find that Defendants’ warrantless entry into Plaintiffs’ home violated the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. And if the jury finds that there was no exigent circumstance, then, as in Barton, Defendants’ warrantless entry into Plaintiffs’ home violated clearly established law. Accordingly, Defendants are not entitled to qualified immunity on Plaintiffs’ unlawful entry claim.