Police needed warrant to cross suspect's threshold, Circuit says

The line that police may not cross without a warrant or exigent circumstances was drawn at the front door of a defendant's home Friday by a federal appeals court.

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Police Needed Warrant to Cross Suspect's Threshold, Circuit Says Mark Hamblett, New York Law Journal February 1, 2016 | 0 Comments SHARE PRINT REPRINTS The line that police may not cross without a warrant or exigent circumstances was drawn at the front door of a defendant's home Friday by a federal appeals court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit invalidated what it said was, in effect, an "across-the-threshold" warrantless arrest of a Vermont man in his apartment, as it set the boundaries of what is permissible under the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. The circuit, in United States v. Allen, 13-333-cr, said the protections outlined in major case law on the issue "are primarily triggered by the arrested person's location and do not depend on the location or conduct of the arresting officers." Dennis Allen was sought in connection with an assault on July 27, 2012, when four officers or detectives went to the ground-floor entrance to his apartment on Park Street in Springfield, Vermont. They knocked and Allen came down to the front door, shoeless, and spoke with the police for five or six minutes from inside the threshold and denied the assault. Police told him he would have to come down to the station and Allen complied, but said he needed to tell his 12-year-old daughter where he was going and he had to put on some shoes. The police agreed, but insisted that they accompany him up the stairs to the second floor. Once upstairs, Allen was asked if he had anything in his pockets. He removed seven bags of marijuana, and police saw evidence of paraphernalia in the apartment. They applied for a search warrant that day, returned, and found a handgun, which led them to charge Allen with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. Allen was later interviewed on Oct. 12, and made inculpatory statements, including admitting the gun was his. Allen's motion to suppress both the weapon and his statements was denied by U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss and Allen, being held pretrial, entered a conditional guilty plea while he appealed to the Second Circuit, where Judges Robert Sack, Gerard Lynch and Raymond Lohier vacated the lower court's decision Friday. Lynch wrote for the court, saying the case law was divided on the meaning of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980), where the court held that law enforcement violates the Fourth Amendment, when, absent exigent (emergency) circumstances or the consent of the homeowner, police enter the home to make a warrantless search or arrest. Some circuits, Lynch said, hold there is no Payton violation unless police actually cross the threshold. Others, he said, take a broader view—that Payton may be violated even without the police physically entering the home on the theory of "constructive or coercive entry." But those cases are not binding on the Second Circuit, he said, and they don't answer "whether Payton permits 'across the threshold' arrests where law enforcement officers have summoned the suspect to the front door." The major circuit case on the issue, predating Payton, is United States v. Reed, 572 F.2d 412 (2d Cir. 1978), where the court invalidated the arrest of a suspect by agents who, while having statutory authority and probable cause to arrest but not a warrant, knocked on the door, advised the suspect they were there to arrest her and then crossed the threshold into her apartment and did so. Lynch said the Reed court found the woman was arrested inside her home, and "we further noted that we did not believe that 'the fact that Reed opened the door in response to the knock of three armed federal agents operated in such a way as to eradicate her Fourth Amendment privacy interest.'" 1| 2| VIEW FULL ARTICLE Read more: http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202748381477/Police-Needed-Warrant-to-Cross-Suspects-Threshold-Circuit-Says#ixzz3ygvnlS6U