- CANIGLIA, ___ US ___, ___ SC ___, ___ LE2 ___ (21) #20–157:
With rare unanimity on the 4th Amendment, the Court holds there is no “community caretaking” exception to the warrant requirement when entering a home. There may be in an auto situation [Cady, 413 US 433 (73)], but homes are due higher protection.
During an argument with his wife, Caniglia put a handgun on the dining room table and asked his wife to “shoot [him] and get it over with.” His wife left and spent the night at a hotel. Next morning she was unable to reach her husband by phone, so she called police to request that they check on him. The officers accompanied the wife to the home, and saw Caniglia on the porch. The officers called an ambulance based on the belief that Caniglia posed a risk to himself or others. Caniglia agreed to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation on the condition the officers not confiscate his firearms. But once Caniglia left, the officers went in and seized his weapons. Caniglia sued, claiming that the officers had entered his home and seized him and his firearms without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The District Court granted summary judgment to the officers. The First Circuit affirmed.
A unanimous Supreme Court, per Thomas, J., vacated and remanded.
What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes. Cady acknowledged as much, and this Court has repeatedly “declined to expand the scope of . . . exceptions to the warrant requirement to permit warrantless entry into the home.”
Roberts, CJ, with Breyer, J., filed a concurring opinion to stress that the exigent circumstance exception to help the injured or potential victims is not changed by this opinion.
Physical Force With Intent to Restrain, Even if Suspect is not Subdued, is a Seizure
- TORRES, 592 US ___, ___ SC ___, ___ LE2 ___ (21) #19–292:
Officers with the New Mexico State Police arrived at an Albuquerque apartment complex to execute an arrest warrant. They approached Roxanne Torres, who was standing near a Toyota FJ Cruiser. The officers attempted to speak with her as she got into the driver’s seat. Believing the officers to be carjackers, Torres hit the gas to escape. The officers fired their service pistols 13 times to stop Torres, striking her twice. Torres managed to escape and drove to a hospital 75 miles away, only to be airlifted back to a hospital in Albuquerque, where the police arrested her the next day.
Torres later sought damages from the officers under 42 U. S. C. §1983. She claimed that the officers used excessive force against her and that the shooting constituted an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment. Affirming the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the officers, the Tenth Circuit held that “a suspect’s continued flight after being shot by police negates a Fourth Amendment excessive-force claim.”
The United States Supreme Court, per Roberts, CJ, vacated and remanded, holding that the application of physical force to the body of a person with intent to restrain is a seizure even if the person does not submit and is not subdued. Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Kavanaugh joined.
The rule we announce today is narrow. In addition to the requirement of intent to restrain, a seizure by force—absent submission—lasts only as long as the application of force. That is to say that the Fourth Amendment does not recognize any “continuing arrest during the period of fugitivity.” Hodari D., 499 U. S., at 625. The fleeting nature of some seizures by force undoubtedly may inform what damages a civil plaintiff may recover, and what evidence a criminal defendant may exclude from trial….But brief seizures are seizures all the same.
Applying these principles to the facts viewed in the light most favorable to Torres, the officers’ shooting applied physical force to her body and objectively manifested an intent to restrain her from driving away. We therefore conclude that the officers seized Torres for the instant that the bullets struck her.
Exigency Ends When Emergency Ends
- NUNES, __ CA5 ___, ___ CR3 ___ (21) #H046395:
A captain in the Milpitas Fire Department responded to defendant’s house based on a report of a “whole structure fire,” with fire coming from the house. But when he arrived, he saw no fire and no smoke. Neighbors told him they had recently seen a plume of smoke coming from the backyard.
The captain entered the backyard. He found no evidence of active fire, just the “odor of smoke.” He noticed a closed shed. No smoke was coming from it, nor did the smell of smoke seem to originate from there. He opened the shed as part of his fire investigation because he wanted “to make sure everything is clear.”
Inside the shed was a metal cabinet. In his testimony, the captain admitted there was nothing specific about the cabinet that made him think he should look inside. Still, he opened is and saw bottled chemicals he was not familiar with. He called for the hazardous materials team and the police.
The police ultimately obtained a search warrant, based in part on the chemicals found in the cabinet. Def. was charged with possessing explosives and explosive materials. He moved to suppress, the court denied, and this appeal followed.
The Court of Appeal, per Grover, J., reversed. It stressed the heightened protection under the 4th Amendment offers to the home and its recognized extensions, such as a garage or shed.
Key to our decision is the principle that the justification for searching based on exigent circumstances “ends when the emergency passes.” (People v. Duncan (1986) 42 Cal.3d 91, 99.) And here, the emergency which may have existed when fire personnel arrived on scene was no longer apparent when the fire captain opened the cabinet inside the shed.
***
We are not persuaded that opening the cabinet in the shed was necessary to avoid imminent danger to life or serious property damage, given that the urgency of the situation had dissipated. Indeed, the fire captain’s testimony was that nothing “in particular” about the cabinet led him to open it. The exigent circumstances exception therefore does not extend to the cabinet search. Application of the exception requires both a specific articulation of an emergency threatening life or destruction of property, and an explanation of why the action in question was immediately necessary to address the specified emergency. With regard to the cabinet search, we see neither in this record.
Elia, J., dissented.
Entry into the cabinet was justified….The source of the smoke smell was still unknown after entry into the shed and the fire captain’s concerns about the possible presence of explosive material had not been allayed.