WY: Opening door to home here was not in response to true emergency

Defendant’s mother called the police to say she hadn’t heard from her son in several weeks. The police went to his place and saw that it was apparently occupied: there were fresh tracks in the snow and the sound of a TV on inside. They knocked but got no answer, but a dog inside was barking. They opened the door and saw a bong. She called her son’s roommate, but he wouldn’t reveal the son’s whereabouts, other than to say the two had been snowboarding the previous day. She told the police where the roommate worked, and they went to talk to him. They came back, he admitted that he hadn’t gotten rid of stuff in the house, and they searched. The original entry was illegal for lack of a true emergency. Campbell v. State, 2014 WY 156, 2014 Wyo. LEXIS 179 (December 8, 2014):

[*P23] In Moulton, officers entered the defendant’s home in Glendo because his wife, an emergency medical technician, contacted a law enforcement dispatcher at 4:30 a.m. on a hand-held radio. She identified herself by using her medic’s call sign, and her recorded voice conveyed a sense of urgency. The rest of the transmission was garbled. Officers were concerned that she had encountered an emergency situation requiring police assistance, and they tried to contact her by phone. When they could not, they went to her home. Knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell failed to rouse anyone, and so they entered the home to see if anyone was inside. That brief search yielded two pieces of information. First, a daughter roused from sleep indicated that her mother and father might be at the “lake.” Second, when officers peered into a bedroom they saw psilocybin mushrooms grown by the defendant. The officers then left and searched for Mrs. Moulton at the lake for several hours. Id., ¶¶ 3-6, 148 P.3d at 40.

[*P24] In concluding that the search of the Moulton home fell within the emergency assistance exception, we said that the exception applies when an officer has a reasonable belief that another’s life or safety might be in peril. Id., ¶ 18, 148 P.3d at 43. This was the test applied by the district court in this case.

[*P25] It is evident that this expression of the test is incomplete and does not satisfy the standard set out above, because it does not include the requirement that an officer must reasonably believe that he faces a genuine emergency to which he must respond. Elsewhere in Moulton, we repeatedly stressed that, at 4:30 a.m., an emergency medical technician using the means usually employed when operating in her professional capacity made an urgent-sounding but garbled call for assistance to a police dispatcher, and that she could not thereafter be contacted. Id., ¶¶ 20-21, 148 P.3d at 44. Our intent to confine the application of this exception to cases reasonably said to involve “genuine emergencies requiring immediate assistance” has been more plainly stated in decisions issued both before and after Moulton. Owens v. State, 2012 WY 14, ¶ 11, 269 P.3d 1093, 1096 (Wyo. 2012); Ortega v. State, 669 P.2d 935, 941 (Wyo. 1983), overruled on other grounds by Jones v. State, 902 P.2d 686 (Wyo. 1995).

[*P26] There was no evidence of such an emergency in this case. The officers went to the last known address of a young man who had not spoken to his mother in several weeks. As distressing as that lack of communication might be to a parent, it falls far short of an emergency or a basis to believe that he required immediate aid. Given the likelihood that some people leave their televisions turned on as a deterrent to would-be intruders, and that they may also leave their dogs in the house when they depart for brief periods, those facts likewise do not suggest an immediate emergency. Simply stated, Sergeant Austin testified to no articulable facts supporting a claim that he reasonably and objectively believed that he and his fellow officer were dealing with a serious emergency that required their immediate entry into Campbell’s apartment. Consequently, the emergency assistance exception does not apply. To hold otherwise on the facts of this case would require us to adopt a rule which would render Fourth Amendment protection of the home meaningless.

[*P27] Because there was no emergency when Sergeant Austin opened the door to Campbell’s apartment, that entry was an unlawful search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.