Court Opinion

ID: 9494788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:46:49.702518+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:37.436006
License: Public Domain

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in all of the court’s opinion except the reasoning in Part I. A., and I concur in the result reached in that part for the reasons that follow.
When the police officers arrived at Mr. Mendoza’s house, they had received certain information that it was being used as a duplex, they knew that there was sepa*718rate utility service for each of its two floors, and they observed that there were two mailboxes attached to it. In those circumstances, the officers were entitled to believe that a common, public area lay behind the front door of the house in which Mr. Mendoza lived and thus that they did not need to knock or request permission before entering it.
I therefore suggest that a determination of what, the actual living arrangements were inside the house is not necessary to a decision in this case. It is a familiar general principle that the fourth amendment is not violated when officers act on what they reasonably believe to be the facts, if the facts that they reasonably believe would have rendered their action constitutional had the facts been true. For instance, the Supreme Court held in an analogous situation that the “Constitution is no more violated when officers enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe that the person who has consented to their entry is a resident of the premises, than it is violated when they enter without a warrant because they reasonably (though erroneously) believe they are in pursuit of a violent felon who is about to escape.” Illinois v. Rodriguez, 497 U.S. 177, 186, 110 S.Ct. 2793, 111 L.Ed.2d 148 (1990). The same principle serves to validate the officers’ entry into the residence in this case: They had evidence that supported a reasonable belief that a common, public area lay behind the front door of Mr. Mendoza’s house, and thus the officers were justified in believing that they could enter that door without knocking or without permission from the occupants of that house. See also Maryland v. Garrison, 480 U.S. 79, 86-89, 107 S.Ct. 1013, 94 L.Ed.2d 72 (1987); Brinegar v. United States, 338 U.S. 160, 176, 69 S.Ct. 1302, 93 L.Ed. 1879 (1949).
I therefore concur in the judgment in this case.