Opinion ID: 767557
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Permissible Scope of the Removal

Text: 34 Even if state action to protect Jessie against future Satanic sacrifice by his father were reasonable under the circumstances, triable issues of fact would exist regarding whether the scope and degree of the state interference was justified by the alleged exigency. Bell, 441 U.S. at 559; Barlow, 943 F.2d at 1138 (Police officers can proceed without a warrant if they reasonably believe they are confronted with an emergency that threatens life or limb, but the [intrusion] must be strictly circumscribed by the exigencies which justify its initiation.); Franz, 997 F.2d at 791 (intrusion must be reasonably necessary to alleviate the threat); Good, 891 F.2d at 1093 (under very limited exception to warrant rule, intrusion must be reasonably necessary to alleviate the threat of immediate harm); Hebein, 37 F. Supp.2d at 1043 (holding that danger must justify the degree of interference imposed). Merely because some intrusion on a child's protected privacy and security interests may be reasonable does not mean that any intrusion is. 35 Here, the City asserts that the exigency motivating the officers' decision to remove the children without a court order was the belief that Bill Wallis would sacrifice Jessie to Satan on the Fall Equinox, which was to occur on September 23, 1991. The City argues in its brief that part of its reasonable belief in the credibility of this threat was the information that the Equinox is one of the high holidays  for devil worshipers, when cultists perform human sacrifices and . . . believe that they derive energy from abusing children on that day. (emphasis added). By the City's own admission, then, the police had no information that Jessie's father's plot extended beyond the Equinox; the imminent danger to Jessie was to occur specifically and only on September 23, 1991, a day after the children's seizure. Thus, there is a genuine issue of material fact as to whether the emergency continued to exist for more than the brief day or two following the time of the children's seizure. 36 Furthermore, as previously noted, the police had no information whatsoever that implicated the children's mother in any past or future abuse. There is no evidence that the children could not have been taken with their mother to a shelter, or placed under some other form of protective custody with her until after the Equinox, or even until some later date. A genuine issue of material fact exists therefore as to whether the removal of the children fromtheir mother's custody, and their placement in a county institution for an indefinite period, was sufficiently strictly circumscribed by the exigency that justified the City's intrusion into the children's lives. Good, 891 F.2d at 1093. Such questions are also to be decided by a jury. McKenzie, 738 F.2d at 1008.