Opinion ID: 785535
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Majority's Approach

Text: 71 The majority never claims that the anonymous call reporting a failed drug deal and possible dead body, and the light inside of the defendants' motel room, provided an adequate basis for a warrantless entry into the room under the traditional exigent circumstances doctrine or the emergency exception doctrine. At most, the majority's analysis suggests that the facts known to the officers relating to the possible emergency and crime justified their decision to approach the defendants' motel room and knock on the door. I agree with that proposition. 72 However, Beaudoin had no obligation to open that door, even in response to a knock and request of the police. Because the officers did not have a warrant, Beaudoin could have simply told them to go away. In that case, the officers would have been required to explore other investigative options until they could develop sufficient probable cause to support a search warrant. 73 Yet Beaudoin responded to the officers' knock by opening the inner door to his motel room, revealing only his face. At that critical moment, the majority introduces the exigent circumstance of the risk to the officers' safety. According to the majority, the police officers had a reasonable basis to believe that their safety was at risk based on the information provided by the anonymous call, 12 the sounds that they heard inside of the room, and the way that Beaudoin opened the door. As the majority explains: [t]he partially opened doorway to the small motel room was not a safe place for the police to investigate whether [Beaudoin] was armed, in this situation. 13 Therefore, it concludes that balanced against the objective safety concerns of the officers here, and in light of the call about an emergency, it was reasonable to order Beaudoin to step outside of his motel room. 74 I do not doubt that an officer investigating reports of drug activity and a possible dead body in a motel room has valid grounds for concern about his or her personal safety in standing outside of that room under the circumstances presented here. However, the officers could have addressed their concerns for personal safety by withdrawing from the area around the motel room door in any one of several directions. The door was adjacent to a lit walkway that flanked a circular driveway where the police officers had parked their car in view of the defendants' room. The police did not have to turn their backs to Beaudoin or end their vigilance as they retreated from the area in front of the door. While courts are appropriately reluctant to tell police officers how to carry out their investigatory responsibilities, officers must make investigative choices within the limits of the Constitution. A decision by the Hooksett police officers to withdraw from the area around Beaudoin's door would not mean an abandonment of their investigation of the anonymous call. They could have pursued a number of alternative options, including staking out the scene, 14 questioning other motel residents, or calling Beaudoin's room in an effort to win his consent to a voluntary departure from that room. What the police could not do, however, was use their continued presence outside the motel room door as a basis for disregarding the well-established constitutional prohibition against entering a private residence without a combination of probable cause to believe that criminal activity was occurring within and exigent circumstances or, in a pure emergency situation, probable cause to believe that somebody's life or safety is in danger within the private residence. 75 Implicit in the majority's analysis is the notion that the officers' belief that someone was injured or dying inside of the room justified their continued presence outside of the doorway and, after concerns arose for their own safety, their seizure of Beaudoin. In other words, the police could not have been required to abandon their position in front of the motel room door because they were in the process of investigating a reported emergency. However, the only basis for the officers' belief that someone might be in danger inside the room was an anonymous, uncorroborated 911 call devoid of any details (other than the room number) that did not provide sufficiently reasonable grounds to believe that an emergency existed. Nor was the officers' belief in a possible emergency rendered any more reasonable by their concerns for their own safety or by the fact that they ordered Beaudoin to step outside of his motel room rather than physically entering the room themselves. In essence, when the majority's amalgam of doctrines and its language of reasonableness are probed, it concludes that an anonymous, uncorroborated call trumps the strong Fourth Amendment rule that the police may not enter a private residence without probable cause to do so. This proposition represents a new exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant and probable cause requirements that cannot be squared with traditional exigent circumstances analysis or the emergency exception doctrine. Because the officers in this case had no probable cause basis for believing that there was criminal activity or an emergency inside the defendants' room, I would hold that their decision to order Beaudoin from his motel room violated his Fourth Amendment rights.