Court Opinion

ID: 9521508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:06:36.163308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:49:52.292162
License: Public Domain

DeBRULER, Justice,
concurring in result.
As I understand the United States Supreme Court in Payton v. New York, (1980) 445 U.S. 573, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639, a warrantless entry into the home to arrest one who resides there, with probable cause to believe he has committed a felony is presumptively unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. In such cireumstanc-es, the entry to arrest one who makes his home there is defective unless and until the state justifies the entry by proving "the sort of emergency or dangerous situation, described in our cases as 'exigent circumstances'" and "probable cause to believe that the suspect was home when they entered." Things seen, heard, and taken by police in the course of such a defective entry and stemming solely therefrom must be suppressed. According to Warden Md. Penitentiary v. Hayden, (1966) 387 U.S. 294, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782, "the Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to delay in the course of an investigation if to do so would gravely endanger their lives or the lives of others." If police officers hear a shot and a ery for help from within a home they may demand and then make a forcible entrance in the name of the law. If officers are in fresh or hot pursuit of a suspect who is fleeing or seeking to escape, *866they may chase him into his house and enter immediately into it and arrest him. Johnson v. United States, (1948) 333 U.S. 10, 68 S.Ct. 367, 92 L.Ed. 436. In the case on appeal there is no reason that a police officer could not have been stationed at the hotel and have arrested appellant if he arrived at or sought to leave his room. The inconvenience to the police in requiring them to stop short of entering the home when armed only with probable cause to believe its occupant is a felon who should be arrested, is one of the prices of maintaining a free society. The first entry by the police into appellant's room on the day after the offense occurred was in my view an unreasonable intrusion forbidden by the Constitution, but it should not result in reversal in light of the fact that no fruits thereof support this conviction.