Jimmy Hoover reports:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up a Fourth Amendment case dealing with the kinds of situations in which police can enter a home without a search warrant because they suspect an ongoing emergency poses a danger to someone.
The high court said it would hear the appeal of William Trevor Case, who was shot by police in his Montana home during a suspected “suicide-by-cop” episode and later convicted of assaulting a police officer. Before his conviction, Case sought to suppress evidence collected from his home on the grounds that police had committed an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Below, the Montana Supreme Court rejected Case’s position that police needed to show “probable cause” to justify an “emergency-aid” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s requirement to obtain a warrant from a judge to search a home. The state high court, in affirming the conviction, said police need only have the suspicion that someone is in need of help based on “objective, specific, and articulable facts.”
Other courts have similarly rallied around this “reasonable belief” standard in determining when police can enter a home without a search warrant.
Taking up Case’s appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court will now try to clarify the exact level of certainty police must have that an emergency is occurring before they can enter a home without a warrant— whether that is probable cause or something less demanding.
Read more at Law.com.