Qualified immunity denied in warrantless search case

The warrant requirement is embedded in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The police cannot enter your home without a warrant unless they can prove exigent circumstances, such as to prevent the escape of a felon or to prevent the destruction of evidence. In this case, the police entered the plaintiff's home without a warrant, commencing a years-long legal dispute that culminates in the Court of Appeals ruling this case must stand trial.

The case is Calhoun v. Borona, a summary order issued on December 20. It all started when eyewitnesses saw a confrontation between plaintiff and someone else at a CVS drug store parking lot. The police arrived and went to Calhoun's house nearby, where they saw a few drops of fresh blood on the property and in the driver's seat of his car. The lights were on in plaintiff's house, but no loud noises. After the police pounded on the door, announcing their presence, Calhoun would not let them in. So the police entered on their own volition, without a warrant. Inside, they found a gun and drugs. Then they decided to put everything away and get a warrant, which they used to re-enter the house and arrest Calhoun.

The federal district court granted Calhoun's motion to suppress the evidence on Fourth Amendment grounds, so the criminal charges against him were dismissed. Calhoun then sued the police under the Fourth Amendment. The officers defended the case, arguing they had to enter the house under the exigent circumstances doctrine. That defense can work for some officers, but not this case. The trial court, in dismissing summary judgment and rejecting the officers' qualified immunity argument, said the jury could find the officers violated clearly-established law in marching into the house without a warrant.

The trial court noted that the officers testified that they received multiple reports of shots being fired in the CVS parking lot and that Calhoun had threatened a woman and broke the window of her car with a gun. But there is no evidence that he had fired a gun that day. Nor is there evidence about the nature of the threat against the woman. The only evidence was that Calhoun had used a gun in his hand to break the car window and made an unspecified threat. The trial court said these are not exigent circumstances, which creates a high threshold for the police in proving they had no choice but to enter without a warrant to deal with an imminent emergency. For these reasons, the trial court, the police cannot satisfy the emergency aid exception, as the mere possibility that someone was in danger in Calhoun's house is not enough to meet that narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment..

The officers appealed the denial of qualified immunity to the Second Circuit. As the jury could find the officers violated clearly-established constitutional law in this case, the Court of Appeals (Lohier, Cabranes and Lee) affirms the denial of that immunity without much comment, and the case goes to trial on plaintiff's Fourth Amendment claim.