Court Opinion

ID: 9499186
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:40:14.067907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:20.141571
License: Public Domain

THOMAS A. WISEMAN, JR., Senior District Judge,
dissenting.
The majority decision today substantially broadens the scope and application of the exigent-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. As the majority has observed, a central tenet of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is that police officers need a search warrant to enter a residence unless exigent circumstances justify a warrantless entry. Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 587-88, 100 S.Ct. 1371, 63 L.Ed.2d 639 (1980). Because *789warrantless entries are “presumptively unreasonable,” id. at 586, 100 S.Ct. 1371, the government bears a “heavy burden” of proving that exigency existed. Welsh v. Wis., 466 U.S. 740, 749-50, 104 S.Ct. 2091, 80 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984). In prior cases calling for an examination of the scope of the exception, this court has consistently held that exigent circumstances exist “when ‘real immediate and serious consequences’ would certainly occur if a police officer were to ‘postpone action to obtain a warrant.’ ” United States v. McClain, 444 F.3d 556, 562 (6th Cir.2005) (quoting Welsh, 466 U.S. at 751, 104 S.Ct. 2091) (emphasis added). Conversely, exigent circumstances have consistently been found lacking when police officers have had nothing more than “unsubstantiated suspicions” that postponing action to obtain a warrant would result in injury to themselves or others. See, e.g., United States v. Bates, 84 F.3d 790, 795 (6th Cir.1996) (holding in the context of the “knock and announce” requirement that “officers must have more than a mere hunch or suspicion” that an exigency exists, and noting that exigent circumstances exist when “the officers have a justified belief that someone within is in imminent peril of bodily harm”). In addition, the Supreme Court’s most recent word on the subject confirmed that a warrantless entry will be justified by exigent circumstances when the police have “an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.” Brigham City v. Stuart, — U.S.-, -, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 1946, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006) (emphasis added); cf. Mincey v. Ariz., 437 U.S. 385, 392, 98 S.Ct. 2408, 57 L.Ed.2d 290 (1978) (noting that many cases have recognized a “risk of danger” exception to the warrant requirement where police officers “reasonably believe that a person within is in need of immediate aid”).
In this case, while it is clear that the police officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that the Lonyo Street residence had been recently “shot up” from the exterior, they had no reasonable, articulable basis for believing anyone was inside the house at the time (other than a general observation that the house appeared to be inhabited), much less an articulable basis for believing any such person could be in need of immediate assistance. Instead, as the district court recognized, they had an unsubstantiated suspicion that someone might possibly have been inside the house when the shooting occurred and might have been injured. In my view, this type of speculation should not be considered to create an exigent circumstance. It is also troubling that the officers made no attempt to conduct further investigation or obtain additional information to corroborate their suspicions. Although the officers spoke briefly with the next-door neighbors who came outside when the officers arrived, they apparently did not ask the neighbors when the shooting occurred, whether they knew if anyone had been inside the house at the time of the shooting, or whether they had heard any screams, shouts, moans or any other sounds from inside the house during or after the shooting. There was no car parked in front of or beside the house to indicate that someone was home. Again, the police officers simply had no reasonable basis for believing that anyone had been inside the house at the time of the shooting, much less that anyone might have been injured.1
*790In every other comparable case decided by this court of which I am aware, the officers entering a home without a warrant have known, at a minimum, that someone was actually in the house at the time of the warrantless entry. See, e.g., Causey v. City of Bay City, 442 F.3d 524, 529-30 (6th Cir.2006) (at the time of the warrantless entry, the officers “had received a report of the shots-fired call, confirmed with the neighbor who called that six shots had been fired from [within] the ‘back area’ of the plaintiffs’ residence, and learned from the neighbor that she had not seen anyone enter or leave the plaintiffs’ property after she called the police”; the court therefore found it “reasonable for [the police] to believe that someone inside the house was willing to use a weapon and thus that an exigent circumstance existed”); Thacker v. City of Columbus, 328 F.3d 244, 254 (6th Cir.2003) (noting that the existence of exigent circumstances in that case was “a close question,” but that the police officers’ observations of the bloody, injured and belligerent man who answered the door when police responded to a 911 call made from the same residence, and the need to safeguard the paramedics who had arrived at about the same time as the police, supported a finding of exigent circumstances); Ewolski v. City of Brunswick, 287 F.3d 492, 502 (6th Cir.2002) (exigent circumstances justified police officers’ warrant-less entry when, among other things, they knew when they went to the residence that the occupant “was a mentally disturbed man who was volatile, dangerous and not taking his prescribed medication,” and had been behaving in a threatening manner; he had inexplicably kept his son home from school that day; his disabled wife was also at home, and the officers observed him behaving erratically immediately prior to their decision to enter); Dickerson v. McClellan, 101 F.3d 1151, 1160 (6th Cir.1996) (the presence of a weapon inside the house and the occupant’s demonstrated willingness to use it constituted an exigency, particularly given that the police, when they arrived, could also hear a male voice inside the house yelling in a threatening tone; the court again noted that it was a close call, but found that an exigent circumstance existed because the officers had a “justified belief’ that someone in the residence was in imminent peril of bodily harm).2
*791I agree with the majority’s observation that the two dispositive factors in each of these cases are (1) the potential for injury to the officers or others and (2) the need for swift action. Unfortunately, neither of these factors is present in this case, given that the “potential for injury” is purely hypothetical. Here, quite simply, the police officers’ suspicion that there might have been an injured person inside the house who might be in need of aid was nothing more than a hunch or unsubstantiated suspicion of the type this court has previously held is not sufficient to create an exigency. Because the officers’ entry in this case was not based upon any objectively reasonable basis for believing that someone was inside the house and in need of medical assistance, I would reverse the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress and remand for further proceedings.

. It also appears remarkably convenient that the officer who testified, Officer Dotson, had very selective recollection of the events of the day in question. Officer Dotson recalled that the dispatcher stated someone in the house might have been injured, but he did not remember anything else the dispatcher might have mentioned. He specifically did not recall whether the dispatcher told them when *790the drive-by shooting had occurred. Further, Officer Dotson did not recall whether the neighbors with whom he and Officer Womack spoke had said anything about when the shots occurred, whether they knew whether anyone had been inside, whether anyone inside might have been injured, or whether they had heard any screams or moans. Officer Womack’s report indibated that the neighbors stated that the location had been shot up on the previous night. Officer Womack did not testify at the suppression hearing, however, and the district court concluded that there was no indication in Womack's report as to when he learned that the shots had been fired the night before. The district court therefore credited officer Dotson’s testimony that he did not know at the time he entered the Lonyo Street residence when the shooting had occurred.
I agree with the majority that the question of whether the officers knew the shots had been fired the night before is not pertinent to the exigent-circumstances analysis. Moreover, this court is required to view the facts in the light most favorable to the government. It is nonetheless apparent to me that the government manipulated the evidence for the purpose of making it appear that the officers were not aware of when the shots had been fired.

. Opinions from outside this circuit are generally consistent. Cf. United States v. Holloway, 290 F.3d 1331 (11th Cir.2002) (war-rantless entry justified where police were responding to two 911 dispatches of continued gunshots and arguing from a mobile home and, upon arrival, police encountered the occupant and his wife on the porch; another man emerged from a horse trailer in the yard and a child later appeared in the doorway of the residence); Tamez v. City of San Marcos, 118 F.3d 1085 (5th Cir.1997) (noting that, in the Fifth Circuit, the presence of an armed suspect who poses an *791immediate threat to citizens can justify a warrantless search, and thus that the war-rantless entry at issue was justified where police were responding to a night-time call of shots fired from within a residence, where they observed an individual who was the target of a separate criminal investigation exit the house and the officers knew that the man did not own the house, and the officers heard noise inside the house but could not determine whether anyone was inside without breaking the threshold of the doorway); United States v. Arcobasso, 882 F.2d 1304 (8th Cir.1989) (warrantless entry and search for possibly injured persons justified where police responded to a call of shots fired within a residence and observed through an open window the occupant dry-firing a gun; the occupant stated to police that there was another person in the house).