Court Opinion

ID: 9896674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-13 23:00:37.450505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:11.885545
License: Public Domain

In the

    United States Court of Appeals
                 For the Seventh Circuit
                     ____________________
No. 22-2135
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                   Plaintiff-Appellee,
                                 v.

TYRONE MAXWELL,
                                               Defendant-Appellant.
                     ____________________

         Appeal from the United States District Court for the
                     Central District of Illinois.
           No. 19-cr-30049 — Sue E. Myerscough, Judge.
                     ____________________

 ARGUED SEPTEMBER 14, 2023 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 13, 2023
                ____________________

   Before ROVNER, HAMILTON, and BRENNAN, Circuit Judges.
   BRENNAN, Circuit Judge. During a warrantless search of Ty-
rone Maxwell’s apartment, police found evidence of illegal
drug activity. That evidence was seized, and he was charged
with various drug-related crimes. Maxwell moved to sup-
press that evidence, arguing that the search was not justified
by exigent circumstances and the officers’ manner of entry
was unreasonable. The district court denied the motion and
2                                                  No. 22-2135

Maxwell conditionally pleaded guilty. He now appeals, argu-
ing the search violated the Fourth Amendment.
    When the police entered Maxwell’s apartment, they had
an objectively reasonable basis for believing someone was
injured inside, their entrance did not cause excessive or un-
necessary damage, and they searched only in places where an
injured person could be. Maxwell’s motion to suppress the
evidence police obtained was thus properly denied.
                               I

    On an August afternoon in 2019, two men approached a
secured apartment building in Springfield, Illinois, buzzed a
neighboring unit, and explained they were trying to contact
Apartment 7’s resident. Neighbors let them in but moments
later heard gunshots. The two men fled and neighbors called
9-1-1. When police officers arrived, they saw bullet holes in
Apartment 7’s front door, shell casings on the stairs, and an
empty gun holster.
    Considering whether someone may be inside Apartment
7 who was injured or needed assistance, the officers called an
ambulance and tried to make contact with anyone inside.
Hearing no response, they attempted to open the door manu-
ally. When that was unsuccessful, they used a sledgehammer.
That implement dented the doorknob, fractured the door,
splintered the doorjamb, and overcame the deadbolt, allow-
ing entry. From the officers’ arrival to this point, ten minutes
had passed.
   Police opened the door and immediately smelled raw can-
nabis and saw loose cannabis. Springfield Police Sergeant
Grant Barksdale, the responding officer in charge, turned left
down a hallway which led to a bedroom. He entered the room
No. 22-2135                                                           3

and saw a closet large enough to fit a person. When he opened
the closet door he found more cannabis. Returning to the liv-
ing room, he found another large closet. He opened that door,
pushed aside some hanging clothes, and found a rifle. Police
also saw a money counter sitting on a living room table.
    The search lasted no more than ninety seconds.1 After
some time, Tyrone Maxwell arrived and police determined
that it was his apartment. The officers sought and received a
search warrant based on what they found in and outside the
apartment. During the subsequent search, they found a total
of two guns, more than ten pounds of marijuana, and more
than $75,000 in cash.
    A grand jury indicted Maxwell on three crimes: possession
of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession of firearms
in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and possession of
firearms as a felon. He moved to suppress the evidence seized
during the searches before and after the warrant was issued.
Maxwell argued the police did not face an emergency justify-
ing a warrantless entry.
    The magistrate judge held an evidentiary hearing at which
Barksdale testified. After the hearing the parties submitted
supplemental briefs. Maxwell again argued that no exigent
circumstance warranted entry. He also urged that officers
acted unreasonably by using the sledgehammer, the officers’
view from the open door dispelled any exigency, and their
search of the apartment was unreasonable. After the supple-
mental briefing, the magistrate judge recommended that the
district court deny Maxwell’s motion. Maxwell objected to the

   1 Testifying at the suppression hearing, Barksdale estimated that the

search was “maybe a minute, minute and a half.”
4                                                   No. 22-2135

recommendation.
    The district court ruled against Maxwell on each point.
The court credited the responding officers’ concern for poten-
tially wounded occupants and recognized that although the
bullet holes were near the deadbolt, they may have struck a
person answering the door. Further, it rejected Maxwell’s ar-
gument that using the sledgehammer was an excessive means
of entry, as he cited no cases supporting a sledgehammer’s
presumptive unreasonableness. The court also recognized the
possibility that a wounded occupant could have hidden in-
side, meaning officers did not have to depart immediately
upon entering, as Maxwell argued. The court concluded that
“the officers limited their search to areas where an injured
person in need of assistance may have been hiding.”
    Maxwell entered a conditional guilty plea pursuant to
Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(a)(2) on the drug-re-
lated counts, preserving his objection to the suppression rul-
ing. On the government’s motion the court dismissed the
felon-in-possession count. The court sentenced Maxwell to
consecutive terms totaling 60 months and one day, with one
day time served.
                               II
   When a district court denies a motion to suppress evi-
dence, we review its legal conclusions de novo and its factual
findings for clear error. See United States v. Collins, 59 F.4th
286, 291 (7th Cir. 2023).
   The Fourth Amendment requires all searches to be reason-
able. See, e.g., Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 353 (1967).
Maxwell offers three arguments for why and how the officers
acted unreasonably: First, they had no reason to believe
No. 22-2135                                                      5

someone was injured inside his apartment and in need of aid.
Second, it was unreasonable to use a sledgehammer to gain
entry to his home. Third, any exigent circumstances evapo-
rated when the officers first looked inside, or alternatively,
once inside, the officers could not look beyond the immediate
vicinity of the door.
                                A
   Maxwell starts with his broadest attack: The police had no
reasonable basis to believe that an occupant of his apartment
was seriously injured, so their warrantless entry and search
violated the Fourth Amendment.
    The Fourth Amendment has indeed “drawn a firm line at
the entrance to the house,” and “[a]bsent exigent circum-
stances,” a warrantless entry is unreasonable. Payton v. New
York, 445 U.S. 573, 590 (1980). One such exigent circumstance
justifying warrantless entry is the need “to render emergency
assistance to an injured occupant.” Brigham City v. Stuart, 547
U.S. 398, 403 (2006). To enter a home on an exigency alone,
police need an “objectively reasonable basis for believing,”
Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 406, that “someone is in need of aid
and there is a compelling need to act,” Sutterfield v. City of Mil-
waukee, 751 F.3d 542, 564 (7th Cir. 2014).
    To Maxwell, the police had no reasonable basis to believe
someone was home and injured. First, he contends that many
of the facts known to the responding officers negated the in-
ference that someone was home. There was no response when
the officers attempted to make contact with any occupants of
Apartment 7 or as they entered. A neighbor called 9-1-1, and
nobody mentioned seeing an occupant of that unit.
6                                                     No. 22-2135

    The emergency aid exception does not require injured oc-
cupants to call out for help. Indeed, this court has upheld en-
tries where, like here, police heard only silence inside. See, e.g.,
United States v. Schmidt, 700 F.3d 934, 936–37 (7th Cir. 2012)
(search of backyard on emergency aid exigency was proper
even where officer heard nothing in yard); United States v.
Brown, 64 F.3d 1083, 1086 (7th Cir. 1995) (ruling that the emer-
gency aid exception justified a warrantless search of an apart-
ment even though officers could not hear noise inside). This
court has signaled support for entries where silence sup-
ported the inference of an injured occupant. See United States
v. Venters, 539 F.3d 801, 809 (7th Cir. 2008) (no noises from
within shed consistent with possibility occupant was too in-
jured to respond). Its novelty aside, Maxwell’s approach
might require police to abandon those too wounded to ask for
help.
    Second, Maxwell says the apparent intent of the shooters
makes a wounded occupant unlikely. The two bullet holes in
Apartment 7’s door were about four centimeters apart, one
slightly below the deadbolt locking mechanism and the other
to its left. From this pattern, Maxwell discerns that the shoot-
ers intended not to injure an occupant but to disable the dead-
bolt and open the door.
    Our concern, though, is about the bullet holes in the door.
In Schmidt, for example, police knew nothing of the shooters’
intent, including whether it was to harm the known victim,
an occupant of the duplex, or some uninjured third party.
This court focused on the likelihood that gunshot victims
might be near bullet holes and shell casings. See Schmidt, 700
F.3d at 938. We follow the same approach here and focus on
where the two bullets traveled—through Apartment 7’s front
No. 22-2135                                                     7

door.
   Before deciding to enter the apartment, officers knew
neighbors had heard gunshots in the building. The officers
saw shell casings and a holster on the ground in front of the
apartment. And most importantly, they saw bullet holes in
the apartment door.
    Though not identical, some of our past cases are similar.
In Schmidt, police entered a duplex’s backyard after hearing
gunshots in the neighborhood, seeing bullet holes in the du-
plex, and seeing shell casings around the property. 700 F.3d
at 936. The court held that “[t]hese circumstances, taken to-
gether” supported the inference that someone was injured in
the backyard. Id. at 938; see also id. at 937–38. Indeed, “the of-
ficer … did not need to know that someone had actually been
shot in order to go into the yard.” Id. at 938.
    In another case, police entered a woman’s home without a
warrant after she could not be located while experiencing a
serious medical emergency. Gaetjens v. City of Loves Park, 4
F.4th 487, 490 (7th Cir. 2021). Sally Gaetjens’s doctor had told
her to check into a hospital after a checkup revealed she had
high blood pressure. Id. Later that day, the doctor could not
find her, so the doctor called her neighbor, Gaetjens’s emer-
gency contact. Id. After a fruitless search, the neighbor called
the police. Id. When police arrived at Gaetjens’s home, they
“could not see anyone inside” and the neighbor told them
“perhaps Gaetjens was at her other home.” Id. Gaetjens had
been in a hospital the whole time. Id. at 491.
  We held that this search did not violate the Fourth
Amendment. Id. at 493. Police knew nobody had heard from
Gaetjens, her neighbor was concerned about a medical
8                                                    No. 22-2135

emergency, and the mail and garbage at her house were piling
up. It was therefore reasonable for police to believe she was
inside, despite any evidence suggesting otherwise. Id. In other
words, the police did not know where they might need to ren-
der emergency aid, but they believed help was needed some-
where.
   Here, police knew that shots had been fired into Apart-
ment 7, and they saw shell casings and a gun holster nearby.
The bullet holes were in Maxwell’s door, indicating to police
that any victim would be inside the apartment. All of this war-
ranted further inquiry into whether there might have been a
gunshot victim somewhere behind the door. It thus was not
unreasonable for the police to enter.
                                B
    Maxwell turns next to how the officers chose to enter his
home. He sees the manner of entry—forcefully beating down
his door with a sledgehammer—as unreasonable given what
he sees as weak evidence of exigent circumstances.
   The officers’ “manner of … entry” must be reasonable.
Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 406. Police must comply with the
knock-and-announce rule and not cause “[e]xcessive or un-
necessary destruction of property” in due course. United
States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65, 71 (1998). See Wilson v. Arkansas,
514 U.S. 927, 929 (1995) (holding that part of the reasonable-
ness inquiry for a search is whether police knock and an-
nounce their presence).
   The police did not act excessively or unnecessarily when
using the sledgehammer to breach Apartment 7’s door. Police
encounter many locked doors. If, as here, they have no key
and manual force is futile, a sledgehammer or a battering ram
No. 22-2135                                                      9

may be their only option. See United States v. Singer, 943 F.2d
758, 760, 764 (7th Cir. 1991) (officers used sledgehammer to
enter home on no-knock warrant; evidence not suppressed);
United States v. Soria, 965 F.2d 436, 439, 440 (7th Cir. 1992) (of-
ficers used sledgehammer to breach door after no responses
to knocking; evidence not suppressed); Heft v. Moore, 351 F.3d
278, 280 (7th Cir. 2003) (police used a battering ram to enter a
home); Flournoy v. City of Chicago, 829 F.3d 869, 873 (7th Cir.
2016) (same); Taylor v. Hughes, 26 F.4th 419, 424 (7th Cir. 2022)
(same). This court has ruled that use of a battering ram was
“gratuitous,” United States v. Jones, 214 F.3d 836, 837 (7th Cir.
2000), but there the door was unlocked, and police opened it
slightly before ramming it. Sometimes, as in Gaetjens, police
have a key. 4 F.4th at 490. Sometimes, as in Sutterfield, they
can enter with manual force. 751 F.3d at 547. And sometimes,
as here, necessity commands a strong tool.
    The officers also did not use the sledgehammer exces-
sively or unnecessarily. One example of serious property
damage during a search, albeit in a civil claim, is Colbert v. City
of Chicago, 851 F.3d 649, 652 (7th Cir. 2017). Officers “pulled
out insulation, put holes in the walls, ripped the couch open
to search its contents, and tracked dog feces throughout the
house.” Id. (quotations omitted). Colbert brought a § 1983
claim but resolved it without reaching the Fourth Amend-
ment issue. Id. at 658. Here, photographs of Apartment 7’s
door show the officers focused the sledgehammer’s force on
the part of the door most likely to be secure. Nothing indicates
they tried to do anything more with the sledgehammer than
open the door.
   Maxwell takes a different tack. To him, our precedents and
Brigham City require us to weigh the manner of entry against
10                                                  No. 22-2135

how sure the officers are that an exigency exists. For this bal-
ancing test he cites Brown, but that case says something dif-
ferent: the reason for a search controls its breadth. See 64 F.3d
at 1086. Inserting a key into a keyhole requires only a “slight
justification,” id., because “[h]ow much cause agents need to
do something depends on how deeply they invade the zone
of privacy.” United States v. Concepcion, 942 F.2d 1170, 1173
(7th Cir. 1991). Maxwell’s argument is one we have re-
solved—the facts justified a warrantless entry.
     Likewise, he erroneously claims Brigham City requires
“just such an assessment.” In that case the Court held that
“[t]he manner of the officers’ entry was also reasonable.” 547
U.S. at 406. To the extent this refers to something other than
the excessive and unnecessary standard we discussed above,
it refers to the knock-and-announce rule. There, a police shout
was the equivalent of a knock, which would have been lost in
the “din” of the party. Id. at 406–07.
   Consider the knock-and-announce rule. Police have long
encountered locked doors. At the beginning of the seven-
teenth century, in fact, an English court articulated the knock-
and-announce rule to prevent “the destruction or breaking of
any house … by which great damage and inconvenience
might ensue.” Wilson, 514 U.S. at 935–36 (quoting Semayne’s
Case (1604) 77 Eng. Rep. 194, 196; 5 Co. Rep. 91 a, 92 a).
    The police here complied with the rule. Barksdale testified
that he and other responding officers attempted to make con-
tact with the occupants before entry. The officers acted rea-
sonably when they entered the apartment.
                               C
     Third, Maxwell argues the officers could not search the
No. 22-2135                                                            11

entire apartment because either the exigency evaporated
when they opened the door, or that exigency should have con-
fined them to the area in front of the apartment door.
    Once police are inside a home, the Fourth Amendment re-
quires police to limit their search “‘to the circumstances that
justified it.’” United States v. Arch, 7 F.3d 1300, 1304 (7th Cir.
1993) (quoting United States v. Salava, 978 F.2d 320, 325 (7th
Cir. 1992)). Where the circumstance justifying entry is a need
to render emergency aid, police can look only in “those places
where an injured person might [be] found.” Arch, 7 F.3d at
1304. Of course, officers do not have to avert their eyes from
any evidence in plain view when they are looking in those
places. United States v. Gonzalez, 555 F.3d 579, 582 (7th Cir.
2009).
    The police were searching for persons who may be injured
or in need of assistance. They looked for no more than 90 sec-
onds. See Salava, 978 F.2d at 325 (“The ensuing search, which
took approximately one minute and consisted of a brief check
of the trailer for shooting victims, was appropriately limited
to the circumstances that justified it.”). They looked in two
closets large enough to fit a person. Then they left. Given
those events over that short time frame, the exigency did not
evaporate when the officers opened the front door, and they
appropriately tailored their search to that exigency.2

    2 Body-camera video of the search shows police opening kitchen cab-

inets too small to conceal a wounded person. That footage was not admit-
ted into evidence. Based on the briefs and oral argument before us, we
understand that Barksdale’s testimony at the suppression hearing con-
flicted with the body-camera footage as to the scope of the search. In the
district court, Maxwell’s trial counsel declined the government’s offer to
address Barksdale’s testimony and to introduce the footage into evidence.
12                                                         No. 22-2135

    Maxwell notes that the police saw neither blood nor gun-
shot victims inside his apartment. But, as Barksdale testified,
gunshot victims do not always leave behind a large amount
of blood. Further, a gunshot victim does not necessarily re-
main where he was shot. Maxwell focuses on two possible
scenarios, both of which were impossible, he says, because
police did not find a gunshot victim or blood. A hypothetical
victim would have remained on the floor in front of the door.
Or, a hypothetical victim might have moved away from the
door while bleeding so badly that he became unconscious and
could not answer police knocks.
    These are certainly possibilities. But it is just as possible a
victim did not pass out and did not want to interact with po-
lice. Cf. Sutterfield, 751 F.3d at 545, 546–47 (individual who had
threatened suicide resisted officers’ attempts to render aid). It
is not unreasonable that a gunshot victim might want to
evade both a shooter and police who might arrive soon.
    Finally, Maxwell argues that the scope of the search was
unreasonable. He contends that the only place officers were
likely to find gunshot victims or evidence of them was in the
immediate vicinity of the front door. Maxwell supports his
view with United States v. Brand, in which the Fifth Circuit
held that police could go no farther than the living room,
where they found defendant unconscious. See 556 F.2d 1312,
1318 (5th Cir. 1977). Brand is correct—the exigency ended be-
cause the officers found the victim. Here, the exigency did not
end until police looked in the last area in which an injured
person could have been found.

We confine our analysis to the record evidence. United States v. McDonald,
981 F.3d 579, 581 (7th Cir. 2020).
No. 22-2135                                                   13

    This case better resembles United States v. Richardson, 208
F.3d 626 (7th Cir. 2000). A 9-1-1 caller alerted police to an al-
leged murder victim that could be found in a basement of a
duplex. Officers arrived and conducted a search of the entire
house, finding nothing supporting the caller’s claim. Id. at
627–28. This court approved such an expansive search be-
cause “it was objectively reasonable for the officers to con-
clude that the situation presented exigent circumstances” Id.
at 631. There, like here, police had an objectively reasonable
basis for believing someone needing medical attention was
inside a home. And there, like here, they acted reasonably by
searching wherever that person could be.
    Police do not have to stop looking for wounded occupants
just because they do not see blood or a body in one place. The
officers here did not act unreasonably during their search of
Maxwell’s apartment.
                               III
   The Springfield police had an objectively reasonable basis
for believing someone was inside Maxwell’s home and in
need of medical attention. They announced their presence be-
fore breaching the deadbolted door, and once inside they
looked only in areas where an injured person in need of assis-
tance may have been hiding. The search was reasonable un-
der the Fourth Amendment and the district court properly ad-
mitted the evidence police obtained.
   We therefore AFFIRM the district court’s decision to deny
Maxwell’s motion to suppress.