US Supreme Court Stanton v. Sims 12-1217

Decision here.

   Stanton was a cop in California who was responding to a call of a disturbance involving a baseball bat.  While we was arriving, he saw a few people leaving the area.  Finding one of them (who was hurrying towards a nearby house) suspicious, he ordered that person to stop.  That person looked at him, but ignored his order and ran through a gate into a yard with a taller-than-six-foot privacy fence.

   Stanton kicked the gate open.  Unfortunately, Sims (who was the owner of the property behind the fence, but who was not the person Stanton was chasing) was standing just on the other side of the fence.  He was injured, and he sued Stanton.

   The district court granted Stanton qualified immunity.  The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that Stanton had violated Sims' clearly-established constitutional right by pursuing a misdemeanor suspect into his yard without first obtaining a warrant.  I'm not even kidding, that was their decision.

   Stanton appealed to the Supreme Court, where the Ninth Circuit was reversed again.  The court chose not to decide whether or not it was constitutional for Stanton to enter Sims' yard without a warrant, but simply pointed out that the question was far from being beyond debate.  Hot pursuit of fleeing felons is recognized as a reason to chase someone into their (or a) house, but different jurisdictions have different opinions about whether the same can be said of misdemeanors.  Some of those decisions turned on circumstances other than just the seriousness of the offense.  The decisions which the Ninth relied on in finding that the law was clearly established weren't all that on point, and the Supreme Court even dug up some California cases which suggested that it isn't really significant to hot pursuit whether the underlying offense is a misdemeanor or felony.

   So although this is one of those sometimes aggravating deciding-not-to-decide cases, the court did say that the issue of misdemeanor hot pursuits is still up for grabs, and therefore Stanton was entitled to qualified immunity after all.

Tenth Circuit Mascorro v. Billings 10-7005

Decision here.

   In this case, Deputy Billings saw his 17 year old neighbor driving without headlights.  Billings had had previous enforcement contact with the kid, and thought he might have drugs (although there was no PC for this; all he had was traffic charges).  He tried to make a traffic stop, and the kid instead drove home and then ran into his house and hid.  There is no mention in the decision of any recklessness that would have given rise to eluding charges.  The house apparently only has one entrance (maybe it was a really little apartment?).

   Deputy Billings started banging on the door and demanding that the occupants come out.  Christina and Jose Mascorro (the kid's mom and step-dad) answered the door.  Billings gun-pointed them, demanded to know where that little motherfucker was, etc.  According to Billings' testimony, Christina tapped him in the chest with her finger at some point.  Christina, Jose, and their 14 year old kid were all pepper sprayed, and Billings made entry into the residence over their objection, kicked the bathroom door in, and arrested the 17 year old who was hiding there.  The Mascorros were transported to a hospital for treatment of their pepper spray (apparently over Billings' objection...) and then taken to jail where they were charged with interference.  Christina was also charged with aggravated assault on a peace officer for tapping Billings' chest with her finger.

   At some point during all of that, officers from the local PD arrived to assist.  Testimony conflicts as to when they arrived... the Mascorros say they were there the whole time, the officers say they showed up when shit was already out of control.

   Anyway, all charges against the Mascorros were dropped because the court held that there were no exigent circumstances justifying the entry into their home.  The Mascorros sued, and the officers involved tried to invoke qualified immunity.  The court denied qualified immunity, and the officers appealed.

   The Tenth Circuit affirmed, holding that although there was probable cause to arrest the juvie for a traffic offense, this offense was not serious enough to create exigent circumstances on it own.  Hot pursuit is generally applied to fleeing felons, although it can also apply to misdemeanants (I think the court made that word up) if there are additional aggravating factors.  Hot pursuit into a suspect's home can overcome the presumptive unreasonableness of in-home arrests when it is necessary to prevent the destruction of evidence, or when there is a substantial flight risk, or when the offense is serious, or if there are other officer or public safety concerns.  Given that the suspect in this case was fleeing from a warrantless arrest for a minor traffic charge, and that he was already identified, and that he fled into a house with no other exit, and that there was no articulated danger to the public, the court was having none of this hot pursuit.  The court held that Billings' entry into the home was unreasonable, and that any reasonable officer in his place would have known this, so he was denied qualified immunity.

   There's more.  The court held that whether or not the other officers had participated in this violation of a clearly established right was a question of fact rather than a question of law (it depends on when they showed up, and that fact is in dispute).  So they were also denied qualified immunity.

   Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

Colorado Court of Appeals People v. Lindsey 88CA0274

Decided August 16, 1990.

   Denver PD was investigating a murder/attempt robbery/agg assault and had PC to arrest Lindsey.  Following up on a lead, they went to Lindsey's girlfriend's house (in Aurora) to ask her some questions.  During the interview the officers became suspicious that Lindsey was in the house because his girlfriend was acting like nervous buffoon, gesturing towards the back of the house, and saying that Lindsey had just left but would be back.  And also because they heard someone moving around in a closet.

   So, even though they were outside of their jurisdiction, unaccompanied by local officers, and not in fresh pursuit, they searched the house and found Lindsey.  They arrested him, he later confessed, and he was eventually convicted.  He appealed his conviction, arguing (among other things) that his confession should have been suppressed because his arrest violated Colorado law and the Fourth Amendment.

   The Court of Appeals recognized that Lindsey's arrest was made in violation of Colorado law.  C.R.S. 16-3-106 authorizes the police to make arrests either within their territorial jurisdiction or outside of it when in fresh pursuit (meaning the continuous and uninterrupted pursuit of a suspect without unnecessary delay after the commission of an offense).  Since there was no fresh pursuit here, the Denver officers would have needed to be accompanied by Aurora officers in order to comply with the statute.  That said, this sort of conduct doesn't require suppression unless the violation is willful or so egregious that it violates the suspect's Constitutional rights.

   In this case, the record shows that the police really were there to investigate rather than make an arrest (since they just brought two cops, and entered the house without drawing their guns and only after receiving consent to enter.  Hardly what one does when arresting a murder suspect).  So the violation was not willful.  Further, when the police became aware that the suspect was hiding on premises where they were lawfully present, the exigency of preventing his flight justified making the arrest.  So although the court agrees that they "technically violated the statute," the arrest was justified for Fourth Amendment purposes.

   The court also discusses the requirements for making warrantless arrests inside the home.  It says these do not violate the Fourth Amendment when justified by PC and exigent circumstances, or when justified by PC and consent to enter & search the premises.

   For those who are interested, there's also some discussion of testimonial privilege, evidence of other acts, and a defendant's right not to take the stand.  None of it really matters for the purposes of this blog, though.  Lindsey's conviction was affirmed.

US Supreme Court US v. Santana 75-19

Decided  June 24, 1976

   THE hot pursuit case.  In this case, an undercover officer arranged to buy drugs from a suspect.  The suspect had him drive her to Santana's house, where she went inside and bought drugs with bills that the undercover officer had marked.  She came back outside with the heroin, and the undercover officer drove a couple blocks away and arrested her.  She told the officer that Santana had the money.

   Other officers went back to Santana's house to arrest her.  She was standing on the threshold of her house (which the court deemed to be a public place, allowing her to be arrested without a warrant).  The police attempted to apprehend her, and she retreaded into her home.  They chased her inside and completed the arrest.  She was found to be in possession of more heroin and of most of the aforementioned marked bills.  At her trial, she sought to exclude that evidence as the fruit of an unlawful entry into her home.

   The Supreme Court found the warrantless entry to be reasonable, saying that "a suspect may not defeat an arrest which has been set in motion in a public place...by the expedient of escaping to a private place."

US Supreme Court Warden v. Hayden 480

Decided May 29, 1967

   I looked this case up because it kept coming up in my research on hot pursuit.

   Hayden committed an armed robbery at a taxi company, and two taxi drivers followed him home.  They relayed his address to their dispatcher, who relayed it to the police, who showed up at Hayden's home within five minutes of him getting there.  They knocked, Hayden's wife answered the door, and she offered no objection when the police made entry to search for a robber.  They found Hayden pretending to be asleep in an upstairs bedroom.  They also found a gun in a nearby toilet tank, and in a washing machine they found the clothes the robber was wearing.

   The Supreme Court upheld the warrantless search, because "the exigencies of the situation made that course imperative... 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. Speed here was essential, and only a thorough search of the house for persons and weapons could have insured that Hayden was the only man present and that the police had control of all weapons which could be used against them or to effect an escape."

   So there's that.  The interesting thing is that this was only a minor part of the decision.  Most of the decision has to do with establishing the government's right to seize evidence that only has evidentiary value, rather than also being contraband or the instrumentality of a crime.  Apparently, we couldn't always do that.