In criminal procedurelaw of the United States, an exigent circumstance allows law enforcement (under certain circumstances) to enter a structure without a search warrant, or if they have a "knock and announce" warrant, allows them to enter without knocking and waiting for the owner's permission to enter. It must be a situation where people are in imminent danger, evidence faces imminent destruction, or a suspect's escape is imminent. Once entry is obtained, the plain view doctrine applies, allowing the seizure of any evidence or contraband discovered in the course of actions consequent upon the exigent circumstances.
In the criminal procedure context, exigent circumstance means the following:
An emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to life or serious damage to property, or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect, or destruction of evidence. There is no ready litmus test for determining whether such circumstances exist, and in each case the extraordinary situation must be measured by the facts known by officials.[1]
Those circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry (or other relevant prompt action) was necessary to prevent physical harm to the officers or other persons, the destruction of relevant evidence, the escape of a suspect, or some other consequence improperly frustrating legitimate law enforcement efforts.[2]
Exigent circumstances may make a warrantless search constitutional if probable cause exists.[3] The existence of exigent circumstances is a mixed question of law and fact.[4] There is no absolute test for determining if exigent circumstances exist, but general factors have been identified, which include clear evidence of probable cause; the seriousness of the offense and likelihood of destruction of evidence; limitations on the search to minimize the intrusion only to preventing destruction of evidence; and clear indications of exigency.
Exigency may be determined by degree of urgency involved, amount of time needed to get a search warrant, whether evidence is about to be removed or destroyed, danger at the site, knowledge of the suspect that police are on the trail, and/or ready destructibility of the evidence.[5] In determining the time necessary to obtain a warrant, a telephonic warrant should be considered. As electronic data may be altered or eradicated in seconds, in a factually compelling case, the doctrine of exigent circumstances will support a warrantless seizure.
Even in exigent circumstances, while a warrantless seizure may be permitted, a subsequent warrant to search may still be necessary.[6]
Miranda rights
In New Jersey v. Boretsky, the Supreme Court of New Jersey held that the emergency aid doctrine overrode the need to Mirandize a suspect, even in the face of ambiguous or equivocal assertions of the right to legal representation.[7]
Emergency aid doctrine
Emergency aid doctrine is an exception to the Fourth Amendment, allowing warrantless entry to premises if exigent circumstances make it necessary.[8] A number of exceptions are classified under the general heading of criminal enforcement: where evidence of a suspected crime is in danger of being lost; where the police officers are in hot pursuit; where there is a probability that a suspect will flee before a warrant can be obtained; where a person is in need of assistance; where entry is required to prevent harm to a person.[9] In deciding whether such entry was legal, courts will consider whether a reasonable and prudent person would have considered there was need to make an immediate entry.[10]
In the 1925 Supreme Court case Carroll et al. v. United States, George Carroll and John Kiro were indicted and convicted for carrying "spirituous liquor" in contravention of the National Prohibition Act. Police officers had followed the defendants after their car passed their patrol car and after they caught up with them, they stopped them. After requiring them to pull over, the police officers then conducted a search of the vehicle. In finding that the search was legal, the court compared stopping and searching motor vehicles to the way that the Coast Guard are able to stop and search vessels at sea. The 1970 case of Chambers v. Maroney upheld the categorical application of the automobile exception as it applied to a car that had been searched when impounded. The court upheld the constitutionality of the search on the grounds that at the time the car was stopped, there was probable cause to conduct a search.[11][12]
In 1973, the case of Cady v. Dombrowski provided further support for the categorical application of the automotive exemption. Dombrowski, a police officer, was stopped and arrested while driving drunk. Wondering about the location of Dombrowski's service firearm, which he was meant to carry with him at all times, another police officer conducted a search of the car. In doing so, he uncovered bloodstained items, which eventually led to Dombrowski’s arrest and later conviction for murder. This evidence was admissible.[13]
See also
Missouri v. McNeely (2013) The United States Supreme Court ruled that police must generally obtain a warrant before subjecting a drunken-driving suspect to a blood test, and that the natural metabolism of blood alcohol does not establish a per se exigency that would justify a blood draw without consent.
Mitchell v. Wisconsin (2019) U.S. Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that in the event a driver is unconscious and therefore can't be given a breath test as an alternative to testing blood, exigent circumstances allow for the drawing of blood without a warrant.
↑ STATE v. BORETSKY(Supreme Court of New JerseyApril 5, 2006)("In sum, the police officers' emergency aid response trumps application of Miranda and its protection of defendant's privilege against self-incrimination."),Text.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
Search and seizure is a procedure used in many civil law and common law legal systems by which police or other authorities and their agents, who, suspecting that a crime has been committed, commence a search of a person's property and confiscate any relevant evidence found in connection to the crime.
In the United States, the plain view doctrine is an exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement that allows an officer to seize evidence and contraband that are found in plain view during a lawful observation. The doctrine is also regularly used by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers while screening persons and property at U.S. airports.
Knock-and-announce, in United States law criminal procedure, is an ancient common law principle, incorporated into the Fourth Amendment, which requires law enforcement officers to announce their presence and provide residents with an opportunity to open the door prior to a search.
Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398 (2006), is a United States Supreme Court case involving the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. The Court ruled that police may enter a home without a warrant if they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is or is about to be seriously injured.
Search incident to a lawful arrest, commonly known as search incident to arrest (SITA) or the Chimel rule, is a U.S. legal principle that allows police to perform a warrantless search of an arrested person, and the area within the arrestee’s immediate control, in the interest of officer safety, the prevention of escape, and the preservation of evidence.
Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning warrantless entry into a private home in order to make a felony arrest. The Court struck down a New York statute providing for such warrantless entries because the Fourth Amendment draws a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not be reasonably crossed without a warrant. The court, however, did specify that an arrest warrant would have sufficed for entry into the suspect's residence if there had been reason to believe that the suspect was within the home.
Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U.S. 740 (1984), was a 1983 case before the US Supreme Court determining that a warrantless home arrest without exigent circumstances violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure.
Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court clarified the application of the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination for searches that intrude into the human body. Until Schmerber, the Supreme Court had not yet clarified whether state police officers must procure a search warrant before taking blood samples from criminal suspects. Likewise, the Court had not yet clarified whether blood evidence taken against the wishes of a criminal suspect may be used against that suspect in the course of a criminal prosecution.
The law of search and seizure in Pennsylvania is controlled by both the United States Constitution and the broader protections of the Pennsylvania Constitution. This article is concerned only with the protections provided by the Pennsylvania Constitution.
Cupp v. Murphy, 412 U.S. 291 (1973), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a murder conviction notwithstanding a challenge that the evidence upon which guilt was based was obtained in violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The court held that in view of the station-house detention upon probable cause, the very limited intrusion of scraping the defendant's fingernails for blood and other material, undertaken to preserve highly evanescent evidence, did not violate the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452 (2011), was a decision by the US Supreme Court, which held that warrantless searches conducted in police-created exigent circumstances do not violate the Fourth Amendment as long as the police did not create the exigency by violating or threatening to violate the Fourth Amendment.
Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013), was a case decided by United States Supreme Court, on appeal from the Supreme Court of Missouri, regarding exceptions to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution under exigent circumstances. The United States Supreme Court ruled that police must generally obtain a warrant before subjecting a drunken-driving suspect to a blood test, and that the natural metabolism of blood alcohol does not establish a per se exigency that would justify a blood draw without consent.
R v Fearon, 2014 SCC 77 is a leading section 8 Canadian constitutional law case, concerning the constitutionality of warrantless law enforcement searches of the contents of a cell phone incident to arrest.
United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411 (1976), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that decided that a warrantless arrest in public and consenting to a vehicle search did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
Birchfield v. North Dakota, 579 U.S. 438 (2016) is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the search incident to arrest doctrine permits law enforcement to conduct warrantless breath tests but not blood tests on suspected drunk drivers.
Mitchell v. Wisconsin, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that "when a driver is unconscious and cannot be given a breath test, the exigent-circumstances doctrine generally permits a blood test without a warrant."
Caniglia v. Strom, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case related to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution's "community caretaking" exception.
Lange v. California, 594 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the exigent circumstances requirement related to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court ruled unanimously that the warrantless entry into a home by police in pursuit of a misdemeanant is not unequivocally justified.
Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91 (1990), is a landmark search and seizure case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. In a 7-2 decision, the court held that a person staying as a guest in the house of another had a legal expectation of privacy, and that a warrantless entry into that house to arrest the person tainted the arrest and the individual's subsequent statements.
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