Opinion ID: 612969
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Warrantless Entry into a Home

Text: It is a basic principle of Fourth Amendment law that searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant are presumptively unreasonable. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980) (quotation marks and citation omitted). [T]he Fourth Amendment ... prohibits police from effectuating a warrantless and non-consensual entry into a suspect's home to make a routine felony arrest. Howard v. Dickerson, 34 F.3d 978, 982 (10th Cir.1994) (citing Payton, 445 U.S. at 576, 100 S.Ct. 1371). Even an arrest warrant does not give police carte blanche to enter any dwelling in search of the object of the warrant; while such a warrant permits entry into the suspect's residence to effectuate an arrest, entry into a third party's home for the same purpose requires a search warrant. Steagald v. United States, 451 U.S. 204, 222, 101 S.Ct. 1642, 68 L.Ed.2d 38 (1981). If, however, police have probable cause for an arrest, the existence of certain exigent circumstances may overcome the presumption of unreasonableness that attaches to all warrantless home entries. Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740, 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091, 80 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984); Howard, 34 F.3d at 982. To determine the existence of an exigency, a court must consider the gravity of the offense supporting arrest. Howard, 34 F.3d at 982 (citing Welsh, 466 U.S. at 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091). When the government's interest is only to arrest for a minor offense, that presumption of unreasonableness is difficult to rebut, and the government usually should be allowed to make such arrests only with a warrant issued upon probable cause by a neutral and detached magistrate. Welsh, 466 U.S. at 750, 104 S.Ct. 2091 (footnote omitted). The burden is on the government to demonstrate the existence of exigent circumstances. Id. at 749, 104 S.Ct. 2091. The officers justify their warrantless entry into the Mascorro home by probable cause to arrest Joshua coupled with an exigent circumstance  pursuit of a fleeing suspect. [8] The Mascorros argue the hot pursuit of their son under these circumstances did not constitute the kind of exigent circumstance excusing the officers from obtaining a warrant before entering their home. They do not dispute the relevant facts: Joshua was driving without taillights and he continued driving toward the house when Billings turned around to follow him. And they have not refuted Billings' assertion of probable cause to arrest their son for the traffic offense. [9] In United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38, 96 S.Ct. 2406, 49 L.Ed.2d 300 (1976), the Supreme Court concluded the exigent circumstances, based in part on hot pursuit of a suspect, were sufficient to rebut the presumption of unreasonableness generally attending the warrantless entry into a home. The officers entered Santana's home immediately following a controlled drug transaction when she retreated into her house, still in possession of the drugs, after the officers identified themselves and attempted to arrest her. Santana, 427 U.S. at 42-43, 96 S.Ct. 2406. Santana was in the threshold of her home when officers approached and they pursued her into the vestibule into which she retreated without closing the front door. Id. at 40, 96 S.Ct. 2406. The Court noted the potential for destruction of evidence once Santana had seen the police and concluded a suspect may not defeat an arrest which has been set in motion in a public place ... by the expedient of escaping to a private place. Id. at 43, 96 S.Ct. 2406. Four years later the Court again addressed the issue of a warrantless arrest in a home. In Payton v. New York , it reiterated the requirement for police to have either a warrant or an ability to articulate exigent circumstances in order to enter a home even where circumstances would otherwise permit a warrantless arrest for a felony. 445 U.S. at 590, 100 S.Ct. 1371. That is so because the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant. Id. Again addressing the question of warrantless entry, in Welsh v. Wisconsin , the Supreme Court noted the Court in [ Payton ] explicitly refused to consider the sort of emergency or dangerous situation, described in our cases as `exigent circumstances,' that would justify a warrantless entry into a home for the purpose of either arrest or search. 466 U.S. at 742, 104 S.Ct. 2091 (quotation omitted). Officers arrested Welsh in his home for a drunk driving offense after he left his vehicle at the scene of an accident. Id. at 740, 104 S.Ct. 2091. The underlying exigency in Welsh was not pursuit, but preservation of evidence based on the need to collect blood and breath samples before alcohol dissipated from Welsh's system. Id. at 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091. The Court decided the officers violated the Fourth Amendment by entering Welsh's home at night without a warrant to arrest him for a noncriminal traffic offense. [10] In so holding, the Court looked to the cases in which it had previously found exigent circumstances permitting such an entry, including Santana. The cases involved felonies, and the decision in Payton, allowing warrantless home arrests upon a showing of probable cause and exigent circumstances, was also expressly limited to felony arrests. Id. at 749 n. 11, 104 S.Ct. 2091. Because it concluded no exigent circumstances existed, the Court had no occasion to consider whether the Fourth Amendment may impose an absolute ban on warrantless home arrests for certain minor offenses but held the nature of the underlying offense was an important consideration when determining the reasonableness of a warrantless entry: [A]n important factor to be considered when determining whether any exigency exists is the gravity of the underlying offense for which the arrest is being made.... [A]pplication of the exigent-circumstances exception in the context of a home entry should rarely be sanctioned when there is a probable cause to believe that only a minor offense ... has been committed. Id. at 749 n. 11, 753, 104 S.Ct. 2091 (emphasis added). Immediately after Welsh, we decided Bledsoe v. Garcia, 742 F.2d 1237, 1241 (10th Cir.1984). In Bledsoe, officers had probable cause to arrest for the misdemeanor violation of absence without leave from military duty (A.W.O.L.) and permitted the arrestee to reenter his parents' home to tell his mother he was going to jail. Id. at 1238. Officers heard the residents of the house react with profanity and yelling as someone told the arrestee he was not going anywhere with that son-of-a-bitch. Id. Bledsoe's mother came to the door and told the officers they were not coming in. Id. The officers nevertheless entered the home in pursuit of the arrestee, who escaped. Id. We held the occupants' disturbing reaction, coupled with resistance to the officers' efforts and the possibility of flight, justified the warrantless entry. Id. at 1241. Acknowledging the requirement imposed by Welsh, we characterized the A.W.O.L. violation as a serious offense pointing out it was a misdemeanor just below the general definition of a felony and held it was not error for the district court to fail to instruct the jury on exigent circumstances where undisputed evidence showed exigent circumstances existed. Id. (Nevertheless, giving consideration to the gravity of the A.W.O.L. offense as we must in evaluating the exigency of the circumstances and the circumstances as a whole, we hold that the exception of exigent circumstances applied here.) (citation omitted). We do not find the circumstances here amount to the kind of exigency excusing an officer from obtaining a warrant before entering a home. The intended arrest was for a traffic misdemeanor committed by a minor, with whom the officer was well acquainted, [11] who had fled into his family home from which there was only one exit. The risk of flight or escape was somewhere between low and nonexistent. Moreover, there was no evidence which could have potentially been destroyed [12] and there were no officer or public safety concerns. There is nothing to indicate the sort of real immediate and serious consequences of postponing action to obtain a warrant required for a showing of exigent circumstances. See Welsh, 466 U.S. at 751, 104 S.Ct. 2091. The warrantless entry based on hot pursuit was not justified.