Opinion ID: 785535
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Emergency Exception Doctrine

Text: 82 The question here is whether the Hooksett police officers lawfully ordered Beaudoin to step outside of his motel room under an emergency doctrine that incorporates the Fourth Amendment's requirements for warrantless residential searches and seizures. In addressing this question, I consider whether there existed an objective probability that an individual's life or safety was in danger inside the motel room at the time that the officers ordered Beaudoin to step outside — in other words, whether the risk of an emergency rose to the level of probable cause. 83 The government claims that emergency circumstances were created by the anonymous 911 call that reported a possible dead body inside a motel room. As several circuit courts have recognized, 911 calls are among the most frequent and widely recognized means of reporting emergencies. See, e.g., Holloway, 290 F.3d at 1339 (Not surprisingly, 911 calls are the predominant means of communicating emergency situations.); United States v. Richardson, 208 F.3d 626, 630 (7th Cir.2000) (A 911 call is one of the most common — and universally recognized — means through which police and other emergency personnel learn that there is someone in a dangerous situation who urgently needs help.). When confronted with an emergency situation, police officers generally must act swiftly to investigate and respond to information that someone may be in need of urgent assistance. 84 Although a homicide scene does not automatically present an exigent circumstance that justifies a warrantless search, see Mincey, 437 U.S. at 393-94, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 15 a 911 report of a dead body may in some circumstances create a reasonable assumption that the reported victim might be alive and in need of immediate aid. See Richardson, 208 F.3d at 631 (concluding that it was objectively reasonable for the officers to conclude that the situation presented exigent circumstances based on a 911 report that a woman had been raped and murdered in an apartment). As then-Judge Burger explained in Wayne v. United States: 85 [A] warrant is not required to break down a door to enter a burning home to rescue occupants or extinguish a fire, to prevent a shooting or to bring emergency aid to an injured person. The need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury is justification for what would be otherwise illegal absent an exigency or emergency.... [T]he business of policemen and firemen is to act, not to speculate or meditate on whether the report is correct. People could well die in emergencies if the police tried to act with the calm deliberation associated with the judicial process. Even the apparently dead often are saved by swift police response. 86 318 F.2d 205, 212 (D.C.Cir.1963)(dicta). In this case, the 911 call suggested that someone may have been killed as the result of a drug deal. I agree with the district court that a 911 call reporting a potential victim of a drug-related homicide may present an exigency that compels immediate action and justifies forgoing the delay of obtaining a warrant. 87 The analysis does not end there, however. Again, the government must establish that the suspicion of emergency circumstances rises to the level of probable cause in order to validate a warrantless search or seizure within a private residence. The district court concluded that the anonymous 911 call that reported a dead body inside Room 10 of the Kozy 7 Motel provided both reasonable grounds for effectuating a warrantless attempted rescue of the putative victim and a reasonable basis for doing so within the room specified. The majority apparently does not agree with that conclusion, nor do I. 88 The relevant facts on this issue are not in dispute. The government agrees that the anonymous 911 call alleging a drug deal gone bad and possible dead body provided the basis for the police officers' seizure of Beaudoin. The officers acknowledge that they did not know the identity of the caller or the origin of the call. There is no evidence in the record suggesting that the officers tried to trace the call or conducted any other investigation to corroborate the information that they received or the identity of the caller prior to appearing at the defendants' door. 89 The concerns with anonymous and uncorroborated tips expressed by the Supreme Court in J.L. under a traditional Fourth Amendment analysis are also relevant in the emergency context. It is true that the J.L. Court recognized that certain emergency situations might justify a reduced showing of reliability regarding anonymous tips, explaining that [w]e do not say, for example, that a report of a person carrying a bomb need bear the indicia of reliability we demand for a person carrying a firearm before the police can constitutionally conduct a frisk. 529 U.S. at 273-74, 120 S.Ct. 1375. I recognize that unusually severe and time-sensitive emergencies, such as the report of a bomb, may validate a protective, on-the-street, stop and frisk, even without a showing of reliability. Such an emergency might also justify a search or seizure within a private residence without a showing of probable cause, notwithstanding the heightened privacy interest at stake in such cases. However, an anonymous call alleging a possible dead body inside a motel room does not present the same kind of clear and immediate threat of harm as a report alleging that a person is carrying a bomb. J.L. does not stand for the proposition that an anonymous report of a dead body inside a private residence obviates the need to verify the reliability of the caller or the call. 90 As in J.L., the caller in this case provided no predictive information and therefore left the police without means to test the informant's knowledge or credibility. See J.L., 529 U.S. at 271, 120 S.Ct. 1375. Such a call presents a troubling possibility that someone may have placed the call in order to harass another [by] set[ting] in motion an intrusive, embarrassing police search of the targeted person. Id. at 272, 120 S.Ct. 1375. Indeed, Beaudoin and Champagne were set up by somebody who concocted a phony story about an emergency. 16 There was no dead body inside Room 10 of the Kozy 7 Motel. Instead, an unknown person placed an anonymous and unreliable call reporting an emergency that did not exist. 91 While several circuit courts have applied the emergency doctrine to uphold a warrantless search or seizure in a private residence based on a 911 emergency call, in each case the call at issue was more reliable than the call in this case. In some cases, the caller was not anonymous. See Richardson, 208 F.3d at 628 (caller identified himself by name and explained that he lived at the same address as the alleged murder); United States v. Cunningham, 133 F.3d 1070, 1071 (8th Cir.1998) (caller identified herself). In another case, the address from which the call was placed was verified by caller identification, and the caller described an immediate and deadly threat of harm to which she herself was being exposed. Anthony v. City of New York, 339 F.3d 129, 136 (2d Cir.2003). In still other cases, the police found corroborating evidence of an emergency when they arrived at the reported location. See United States v. Jenkins, 329 F.3d 579, 580-81 (7th Cir.2003) (caller identified herself and called from the location of the alleged assault, and when police officer arrived at that location, he observed that the front door was open and heard sounds of someone standing up and falling down); Holloway, 290 F.3d at 1332-33 (when investigating anonymous report of a violent domestic dispute and gun shots inside a home, police officers discovered individuals on the porch, a shotgun against the house, and several expended and one live shotgun shells on the picnic table and lawn). In none of these cases did the police rely upon an anonymous and uncorroborated emergency call to justify a warrantless search or seizure in a private residence. See Kerman, 261 F.3d at 238 (finding that search violated the Fourth Amendment where it was based on an anonymous and unverified 911 call). 92 The government did not present the district court with evidence that the Manchester or Hooksett police had any additional, objective reason to believe in the reliability of the caller. See J.L., 529 U.S. at 276, 120 S.Ct. 1375 (Kennedy, J., concurring) (noting that instant caller identification and voice recordings of telephone calls may lend reliability to an otherwise unreliable anonymous tip). When the police arrived at the motel, they discovered no commotion, no sign of a disturbance, nothing to indicate that a person had been shot or killed or was in need of emergency assistance. They did not look for a manager or others on the premises to ask if they had heard any disturbance in or around Room 10. Instead, the police seized Beaudoin on the basis of an anonymous call and evidence of someone awake inside the reported location at 5:30 a.m. and movement inside the room. These meager observations did not provide sufficient corroboration of an anonymous and unidentified call from an unknown location reporting a possible dead body at that address to establish probable cause of a danger to the life or safety of someone inside the motel room. Therefore, when the Hooksett police ordered Beaudoin to step outside of his motel room, they violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable seizures and triggered subsequent searches and seizures of Beaudoin, Champagne, and the room that cannot escape the taint of this original violation. 17