Opinion ID: 3050985
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Snipe’s Conviction

Text: Snipe challenges his conviction on the ground that the district court erroneously denied his suppression motion.3 “We review de novo the denial of a motion to suppress, . . . while the underlying factual findings are reviewed for clear error.” United States v. Crawford, 372 F.3d 1048, 1053 (9th Cir. 2004) (en banc); accord United States v. Rowland, 464 F.3d 899, 903 (9th Cir. 2006). Applying that standard, as set forth below, we affirm Snipe’s conviction. The officers’ initial entry was justified by exigent circumstances, and their subsequent observations of illegal drugs in plain view provided probable cause for the search warrant that led to their finding the firearm with an obliterated serial number. 3 The government conceded at Snipe’s plea colloquy that because there was no formal plea agreement, Snipe retained the right to appeal the district court’s suppression ruling. Thus, the government has waived any procedural bar to appealing pre-conviction motions that might be associated with the entry of an unconditional guilty plea. See United States v. Jacobo Castillo, 496 F.3d 947, 954 (9th cir. 2007) (en banc). 1316 UNITED STATES v. SNIPE “[W]arrants are generally required to search a person’s home or his person unless ‘the exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Mincey v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 393-94 (1978) (quoting McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 456 (1948)).4 “ ‘The need to protect or preserve life or avoid serious injury is’ ” one such “ ‘justification for what would be otherwise illegal absent an exigency or emergency.’ ” Id. at 393 (quoting Wayne v. United States, 318 F.2d 205, 212 (D.C. Cir. 1963) (Burger, J.)). The district court relied on that doctrine in denying Snipe’s motion. In so doing, the district court applied this court’s three-part test adopted in United States v. Morales Cervantes, 219 F.3d 882, 888 (9th Cir. 2000), which required that:
believe that there is an emergency at hand and an immediate need for their assistance for the protection of life or property. (2) The search must not be pri- marily motivated by intent to arrest and seize evidence. (3) There must be some reasonable basis, approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be searched. (quoting People v. Mitchell, 347 N.E.2d 607, 609 (N.Y. 1976)). The district court held the government met that test. [1] After the district court’s decision, the Supreme Court decided Brigham City v. Stuart, 126 S. Ct. 1943 (2006), which was intended to resolve “differences among state courts 4 The Fourth Amendment provides that, “The 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, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” U.S. CONST. amend. IV. UNITED STATES v. SNIPE 1317 and the Courts of Appeals concerning the appropriate Fourth Amendment standard governing warrantless entry by law enforcement in an emergency situation.” In Brigham City, the Court began by reaffirming the principle that, “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. Next, turning to the standard governing such entries, the Court held that, as in other Fourth Amendment contexts, “[t]he officer’s subjective motivation is irrelevant” to determining whether such entries are justified. Id.; see also Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 813 (1996) (“[W]e have been unwilling to entertain Fourth Amendment challenges based on the actual motivations of individual officers.”). Instead, in determining whether such entries are justified, Brigham City only asked—with reference to the whole record—whether the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify the action, 126 S. Ct. at 1948, and whether “the manner of the officers’ entry was also reasonable,” id. at 1949. See also id. at 1948-49 (holding the police met the first test because “the officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing” a person inside the house was injured and the violence was ongoing); id. at 1948-49 (holding “[t]he manner of the officers’ entry was also reasonable” because the police repeatedly attempted to announce their presence). [2] Brigham City requires us to reconsider and revise Cervantes in three critical respects.5 The first prong of Cervantes survives Brigham City, and indeed remains the core of the Fourth Amendment analysis of exigent circumstances. Considering the totality of the circumstances, law enforcement must have an objectively reasonable basis for concluding that there is an immediate need to protect others or themselves 5 Though we have noted Brigham City’s holding in the past, see, e.g., United States v. Black, 466 F.3d 1143, 1146 n.1 (9th Cir. 2006); United States v. Martinez-Rodriguez, 472 F.3d 1087, 1096 (9th Cir. 2007), we have not yet explicitly considered Brigham City’s effect on our decision in Cervantes. 1318 UNITED STATES v. SNIPE from serious harm. Second, because Brigham City rejected any subjective analysis, we reject Cervantes’ subjective second prong and hold that law enforcement’s subjective motivations are irrelevant in determining whether the emergency doctrine applies. Third, we also reject Cervantes’ third prong —and Snipe’s attempt to engraft an expanded probable cause inquiry onto that prong—as superfluous because Brigham City failed to conduct any traditional probable cause inquiry. Instead, the Court assumed that probable cause to associate the emergency with the place to be searched exists whenever law enforcement officers have an objectively reasonable basis for concluding that an emergency is unfolding in that place. Indeed, even before Brigham City, both the Second and Eleventh Circuits had held that, “in an emergency, the probable cause element may be satisfied where officers reasonably believe a person is in danger.” United States v. Holloway, 290 F.3d 1331, 1338 (11th Cir. 2002); accord Koch v. Brattleboro, 287 F.3d 162, 169 (2d Cir. 2002). And finally, because Brigham City explicitly considered the officers’ manner of entry, we hold that any subsequent review of an entry pursuant to the exigent circumstances doctrine must consider the officers’ manner of entry. [3] Thus, in place of Cervantes, we now adopt a two- pronged test that asks whether: (1) considering the totality of the circumstances, law enforcement had an objectively reasonable basis for concluding that there was an immediate need to protect others or themselves from serious harm; and (2) the search’s scope and manner were reasonable to meet the need. Under that test, then, as previously under Cervantes, if law enforcement, while “respond[ing] to an emergency, discovers evidence of illegal activity, that evidence is admissible even if there was not probable cause to believe that such evidence would be found.” 219 F.3d at 888.6 6 Snipe argues that any new test should include prongs considering “the gravity of the underlying offense” and “the violent behavior the officers UNITED STATES v. SNIPE 1319 Other circuits have reached similar conclusions. For instance, the Sixth Circuit has held that in cases involving the emergency doctrine, “[t]he government, in order to satisfy the exigent-circumstances exception” must demonstrate that— considering the totality of the circumstances—the search was objectively reasonable because “there was a risk of serious injury posed to the officers or others that required swift action.” United States v. Huffman, 461 F.3d 777, 783 (6th Cir. 2006). The Tenth Circuit—which before Brigham City applied nearly the same three-part test as this circuit—has held that Brigham City excised the second prong of the old three part test and rejected any traditional probable cause inquiry under the third prong. United States v. Najar, 451 witnessed outside of the home.” Neither argument has merit. The suggestion that “the gravity of the underlying offense” should be part of Brigham City’s test would be problematic because requiring officers to weigh the severity of the ongoing emergency before responding “would dramatically slow emergency response time, and would therefore be at odds with the purpose of the emergency doctrine—allow[ing] police to respond to emergency situations.” United States v. Russell, 436 F.3d 1086, 1092 (9th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Snipe’s assertion that the police must witness ongoing violence before responding to an emergency conflicts not only with the purposes underlying the emergency doctrine but also with Brigham City’s express statement that police officers do not have to wait for violence before acting. 126 S. Ct. at 1949 (“The role of a peace officer includes preventing violence and restoring order, not simply rendering first aid to casualties.”); see also United States v. Brown, 64 F.3d 1083, 1086 (7th Cir. 1995) (“We do not think that the police must stand outside an apartment, despite legitimate concerns about the welfare of the occupant, unless they can hear screams. Doubtless outcries would justify entry, but they are not essential.” (internal citations omitted)); 3 WAYNE R. LAFAVE, SEARCH AND SEIZURE: A TREATISE ON THE FOURTH AMENDMENT § 6.6 (4th ed. 2004) (“[B]y design or default, the police are also expected to reduce the opportunities for the commission of some crimes through preventative patrol and other measures, aid individuals who are in danger of physical harm, assist those who cannot care for themselves, resolve conflict, create and maintain a feeling of security in the community, and provide other services on an emergency basis.” (internal quotations omitted)). 1320 UNITED STATES v. SNIPE F.3d 710, 715, 718 (10th Cir. 2006) (noting that Brigham City did not “require probable cause in this type of exigent circumstance[ ]”). Consequently, the Tenth Circuit adopted a new two-part test that asks, like the test we adopt here,“whether (1) the officers have an objectively reasonable basis to believe there is an immediate need to protect the lives or safety of themselves or others, and (2) the manner and scope of the search is reasonable.” Id. at 718. [4] In this case, the police meet both prongs of the test. First, the officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing there was an immediate need to protect individuals at the Snipe residence from serious harm. In determining whether such an entry is objectively reasonable, the Supreme Court has “consistently eschewed bright-line rules, instead emphasizing the fact-specific nature of the reasonableness inquiry,” and looked to the totality of the circumstances. Ohio v. Robinette, 519 U.S. 33, 39 (1996); accord United States v. Banks, 540 U.S. 31, 36 (2003) (“[W]e 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.”). As we consider the totality of the circumstances here, we begin by observing that the officers knew that they were responding to an emergency call by “a hysterical male” who instructed the dispatcher to “[g]et the police over here now” and that call alone largely justified their response. Furthermore, it was objectively reasonable to believe the caller had an emergency, even though that call did not come in on the department’s 911 system, because, as the police dispatcher testified, emergency calls routinely come in on regular lines. That the call came in at 5 A.M. also contributes to the objective reasonableness of that perception. Snipe argues that the police should have done something to verify the caller’s identity or the facts at Snipe’s home before UNITED STATES v. SNIPE 1321 entering the Snipe residence because of the possibility of prank calls. We have previously rejected such a requirement on the grounds that it “would dramatically slow emergency response time, and would therefore be at odds with the purpose of the emergency doctrine—allow[ing] police to respond to emergency situations” in a timely manner. United States v. Russell, 436 F.3d 1086, 1092 (9th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed, in situations like the present, where the dispatcher is prevented from verifying the caller’s identity because the number that the caller called in on does not populate, indicating either it was a blocked number or a cell number, Snipe’s rule might prevent the police from responding at all. We appreciate the risk of a “false positive” emergency call and recognize that a show of police force in response to a prank call is a substantial intrusion on the lives of the prank’s victims. It is the nature of our own assessments of what constitutes an emergency that the police will routinely be summoned for matters that are not, in some objective sense, real emergencies. We will not impose a duty of inquiry on the police to separate a true cry for help from a less deserving call for attention because the delay may cost lives that could have been saved by an immediate police response. The possibility that immediate police action will prevent injury or death outweighs the inconvenience we suffer when the police interrupt our ordinary routines in response to what turns out to be a non-emergency call. [5] The facts the officers confronted when they arrived at the Snipe residence also underscore the entry’s objective reasonableness. For example, when he arrived on the scene, Rodriguez, who is Snipe’s neighbor, immediately noticed a vehicle that he did not recognize. Rodriguez also saw an individual he did not recognize running or walking into the residence. And, as Massey testified, the residence itself looked suspicious because the front door was ajar and he could see light coming from inside the house. Under these circumstances, the officers had an objectively reasonable basis to 1322 UNITED STATES v. SNIPE believe there was an immediate need to protect others from serious harm when they entered the Snipe residence. [6] The second prong of the exigent circumstances test considers whether the manner and scope of the officers’ entry was reasonable. We hold this entry was reasonable. Much like the officers in Brigham City, Massey and Rodriguez knocked and announced their presence before entering the residence. When they saw an individual on a couch and others sitting at a table, they again identified themselves and said they were responding to an emergency call. In these circumstances, their manner of entry was reasonable. The subsequent scope of their search was also reasonable and confined to the areas of the house likely to include individuals in harm’s way. [7] Accordingly, because we find that the district court did not err in denying Snipe’s motion to suppress, we affirm Snipe’s conviction.