Opinion ID: 200436
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Entry to Arrest

Text: 15 The Towers claim that Peary violated their Fourth Amendment rights by entering their home to arrest Tower without a valid warrant. It is well established that a non-consensual, non-exigent, warrantless entry into a home to effectuate an arrest transgresse[s] the Fourth Amendment, notwithstanding that probable cause sufficient to justify the same arrest in a more public arena may have existed. Buenrostro v. Collazo, 973 F.2d 39, 43 (1st Cir.1992) (citing Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980)). In this case, some doubt exists as to whether a valid arrest warrant was issued. 16 Although the defendants insist that Peary obtained a proper warrant for Tower's arrest, no copy of the arrest warrant has been produced. Instead, the defendants produced a copy of the docket sheet in Tower's criminal case, which stated that a warrant had issued. Unable to determine from the record whether a valid warrant existed, the district court concluded that the plaintiffs had raised, albeit by a slim margin, a genuine issue of fact as to whether the arrest warrant had been validly issued. Accordingly, the district court assumed for the purposes of evaluating the defendants' motion for summary judgment that the Towers had stated a Fourth Amendment violation. The defendants do not dispute this conclusion, and there is no suggestion that exigent circumstances existed to alleviate the need for the warrant. 17 Once we have determined that a viable constitutional claim has been stated, we may move on to the qualified immunity inquiry. [G]overnment officials performing discretionary functions generally are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Certainly, the unlawfulness of entering a person's home to effectuate a warrantless arrest in the absence of exigent circumstances was clearly established at the time of Tower's arrest in January 2001. See Payton, 445 U.S. at 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371. But the qualified immunity inquiry demands that we ask a second, more specific question: would a reasonable officer have known that it was unlawful to enter the home under the specific circumstances faced? See Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 637, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987). 18 Maine law largely answers this question. By statute, an arresting officer need not have the warrant in [his] possession at the time of the arrest. Me. R.Crim. P. 4(c)(3). It is uncontested that Peary was told by a court employee that a valid warrant had issued. The district court concluded, as do we, that it was reasonable for defendants to rely on the representation of a district court official, and that a reasonable actor would have believed that the warrant had issued. 19 The Towers argue that the district court improperly failed to engage in an analysis of the defendants' subjective intent and absence of good faith. In evaluating the officer's conduct, we do not focus on the official's subjective state of mind, such as bad faith or malicious intention... we [must instead] make an objective analysis of the reasonableness of conduct in light of the facts actually known to the officer and not consider the individual officer's subjective assessment of those facts. Nor are actual motives for conduct to be considered in evaluating a qualified immunity defense. Sheehy v. Town of Plymouth, 191 F.3d 15, 19 (1st Cir.1999) (internal quotations omitted) (quoting Floyd v. Farrell, 765 F.2d 1, 4-6 (1st Cir. 1985)); see also Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818, 102 S.Ct. 2727. Because objectively reasonable officers would not have known they were violating the Towers' Fourth Amendment rights by entering their home, the defendants enjoy qualified immunity.