Court Opinion

ID: 9498850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:29:36.564615+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:06.397970
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Chief Judge,
concurring in the judgment.
Although I concur with the majority’s decision to reverse the judgment of district court, I write separately because, respectfully, I do not agree that the initial search of 123 Imperial Point was unreasonable.
To overcome the presumption that a warrantless search of a private residence is presumptively unreasonable, the police must demonstrate probable cause and, in this instance, exigent circumstances. In this circuit, only four situations clearly give rise to exigent circumstances: (1) hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect; (2) imminent destruction of evidence; (3) need to prevent a suspect’s escape; and (4) danger to the police or to the public. United States v. Johnson, 22 F.3d 674, 680 (6th Cir.1994); see also United States v. Haddix, 239 F.3d 766, 767 (6th Cir.2001). However, following the lead of other circuits, this circuit has also upheld warrantless searches conducted during suspected burglary investigations under the exigent circumstances exception. United States v. Johnson, 9 F.3d 506, 509 (6th Cir.1993); United States v. Estese, 479 F.2d 1273, 1274 (6th Cir.*5671973). In addition, the court has opined that:
these existing categories do not occupy the entire field of situations in which a warrantless entry may be justified. As an initial matter, the Fourth Amendment’s broad language of “reasonableness” is flatly at odds with any claim of a fixed and immutable list of established exigencies. Moreover, such a claim would ignore the case-by-case and fact-specific development of the existing categories of exigent circumstances. None of the presently recognized exigencies can claim any special constitutional status; instead, each was a product ... of a particular case in light of underlying Fourth Amendment principles.... Therefore, if the situation dictates, we are not precluded from fashioning a new exigency that justifies the warrantless entry into Defendant’s home.
United States v. Rohrig, 98 F.3d 1506, 1519 (6th Cir.1996). The court assesses the police officers’ belief in the existence of an exigent circumstance based upon the “objective facts reasonably known to, or discoverable by, the officers at the time of the search.” United States v. Tibolt, 72 F.3d 965, 969 (1st Cir.1995). See also Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 186, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990). But this is a relatively forgiving standard, as the Supreme Court explained:
“Because many situations which confront officers in the course of executing their duties are more or less ambiguous, room must be allowed for some mistakes on their part. But the mistakes must be those of reasonable men, acting on facts leading sensibly to their conclusions of probability.”
Ibid, (quoting Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949)).
Upon approaching 123 Imperial Point, Officer Germany knew that the house had reportedly been vacant for some time and that a neighbor had called and reported a light on inside. Checking the doors and windows, Officer Germany saw and heard nothing amiss until he reached the front door, which he found ajar. The fact that the officer neither saw signs of forced entry nor heard any noises does not mean there were no possible crimes being committed inside. The house was two stories; the officer testified that a light was on upstairs. Obviously, he could not see into the second floor windows. The house was also not small. It had several bedrooms and a basement. It certainly would be possible for an intruder to have been inside the house, even talking or vandalizing the place, without noise being audible from outside. Therefore, all the officer knew was that a house, reported by a named neighbor to have been vacant for some time, had lights on, no car visible suggesting the owner had returned, and that the front door was ajar, with no porch lights on. Even if the officer could see no signs that the door had been forced, the door could have been left unlocked, the lock could have been picked, or the keys stolen.
The officer had to use his best professional judgment. Admittedly, as Appellees suggest, the officer could have taken other action. Even though it was a Friday night, he could have tried, but did not, to determine who owned the house and attempt to contact him about the supposed intruder. He could have set up a barricade around the house and waited for any intruder to leave. Or he could simply have waited until he had located a judge who would sign a search warrant. While any of these courses of action might have been possible, a “court should ask whether the agents acted reasonably under settled law in the circumstances, not whether another reasonable, or more reasonable, interpre*568tation of the events can be constructed ... years after the fact.” Hunter v. Bryant, 502 U.S. 224, 228, 112 S.Ct. 534, 116 L.Ed.2d 589 (1991). I believe that Officer Germany did act reasonably.
The cases Appellees cite, to argue that this situation could not reasonably lead an officer to believe there was an exigent circumstance, simply do not compare with the case at bar. In United States v. Selberg, 630 F.2d 1292 (8th Cir.1980), the door to the trailer had been open when Selberg left the day before. The trailer was not vacant, and all the officer needed to do to satisfy himself that nothing was amiss was look inside. He did not need to enter to see that no burglary had occurred. In United States v. Morgan, 743 F.2d 1158 (6th Cir.1984), the police waited hours before raiding Morgan’s house and did so based solely on the warning of an anonymous person that Morgan was armed. Finally, in United States v. Williams, 354 F.3d 497 (6th Cir.2003), the DEA officer entered the house without a warrant, even though the testimony of the landlord concerning her suspicions of a marijuana growing operation would have been sufficient to get a warrant and despite the fact that nothing she told them suggested there was any immediate danger.
In none of these cases was an officer confronted with a situation in which he had limited information, all of which suggested the possibility of a crime in progress, and based on which he had to make an immediate decision about how to act. In such an ambiguous situation, the court can only ask that the police act “sensibly,” as a reasonable man making reasonable assessments of probability would act under the same circumstances. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 186, 110 S.Ct. 2793.
In order to make a search reasonable, there must be a balance of the intrusiveness of the search against the exigency of the circumstance. Both are merely estimates of probability, and must be taken together. In this case, the balance of all the information available to the officers was that the house was indeed abandoned, and was not an active residence of a legitimate occupant. Nothing that they saw through the windows or, indeed, once they entered the house (fast food wrappers, one suitcase and a television, and potential contraband in an empty house) negated this perception. This is quite different from the Selberg case, where all the evidence available indicated a legitimate occupant who was merely temporarily absent. On the other hand the exigency, even were I to agree with the court’s opinion that it did not amount to probable cause (but see page 569, infra) amounted to a very plausible belief that there was a good chance that criminal activity, perhaps even violent activity, was afoot.
As I attempt to assess the reasonableness of the officers’ actions in entering the house (as opposed to simply allowing whatever was going on within the house to continue, perhaps for many hours until the hypothesized alternate courses could develop) the fact that this was a situation where a common sense assessment would be that a legitimate owner, could that person have been contacted, would want the officers to investigate the possible break in, tips me in the direction of finding the actions reasonable.
In addition, the various comments in the majority’s opinion (at pages 5-6) that the officers conceded that there was no emergency may represent a somewhat overenthusiastic reading of the transcript. The supporting testimony comes from the officers, at best, agreeing with words put in their mouths in an artful cross examination.
Finally, a word on “probable cause.” While courts have resisted mightily put*569ting a number on probable cause, see Maryland v. Pringle, 540 U.S. 366, 371, 124 S.Ct. 795, 157 L.Ed.2d 769 (2003), at bottom a review of cases indicates that there must be some, albeit inchoate, feeling as to what kind of probability constitutes probable cause. My reading is that it does not require a belief that there is more than a 50% probability of evidence being found in a particular location. See, e.g., United States v. Gourde, 382 F.3d 1003, 1015 (9th Cir.2004) (Gould, J., concurring) (collecting cases). If that were the case, one could never get a search warrant to search all three cars of a person for whom there was overwhelming evidence of general drug dealing, and specific evidence of a drug transaction the proceeds of which were now certainly in one of three cars in his garage, and certainly not in any of the others.
However, to be more than a hunch or a supposition, in my own mind, requires a legitimate belief that there is more than a 5 or 10 percent chance that a crime is being committed or that evidence is in a particular location. How much more is a matter that is unclear in the case law. As the Supreme Court has very recently held: “Probable cause exists when ‘there is a fair probability that contraband or evidence of crime will be found in a particular place.’ ” United States v. Grubbs, - U.S. -, 126 S.Ct. 1494, 164 L.Ed.2d 195 (2006) (citing Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213, 238, 103 S.Ct. 2317, 76 L.Ed.2d 527 (1983)). This “fair probability” standard clearly describes some probability, less than a preponderance, that would “warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief’ that evidence of a crime would be found in a search. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. at 188, 110 S.Ct. 2793. Using this standard, my judgment would be that there was probable cause to believe that criminal activity was afoot in the house, based on the information on which the officers could reasonably rely that there was not a legitimate reason for activity in the house.
Therefore, I would uphold the initial warrantless search as falling under the exigent circumstances exception.