PA: No IAC for not challenging entry into house to look for potential domestic violence victim

Defense counsel was not ineffective for not challenging the police entry during a 911 anonymous domestic abuse call that there was screaming coming from inside defendant’s home. When they got there, there was silence, but the silence could have meant bad things besides there just not being anybody home. Police arrived within three minutes of the call, and all they could hear from inside was a ringing telephone. Most importantly, this was not an entry to search for crime – it was an entry to look for a person in need of assistance. Thus, the entry was lawful on the totality. Commonwealth v. Davido, 2014 Pa. LEXIS 3334 (December 15, 2014):

The anonymity of a call reporting domestic abuse is not fatal to establishing the exigency necessary to enter a dwelling without a warrant under the totality of the circumstances. See e.g., State v. Edmonds, 47 A.3d 737, 750 (N.J. 2012) (“[A]llegations of domestic violence, even if coming from a seemingly anonymous source, cannot be breezily dismissed and must be investigated.”). Here, the 911 call reporting domestic violence contained the fairly specific details that a man was beating a woman within a specifically identified residence, and a separate report indicated that screaming could be heard emanating from within that residence. Yet, when the officers arrived at the scene shortly before 8:00 a.m. on that Sunday morning, approximately three minutes after the 911 call had been received, no one answered the door, and no sound could be heard except the unanswered ringing of a telephone within the residence.

One reason courts have recognized that deference to officers’ on-the-spot reasonable judgments is particularly warranted in domestic disputes is that “the signs of danger may be masked.” Fletcher v. Town of Clinton, 196 F.3d 41, 50 (1st Cir. 1999). In domestic violence situations, the victim often remains silent, or does not seek police intervention, or lies to protect the abuser for fear of retaliation. See id. (citing Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Rep. No. NCJ-167237, Violence by Intimates at v (1998) (noting that one of “most common reasons given by victims for not contacting the police” was that they “feared retaliation”)). We also recognize, of course, that a domestic abuse victim who has been severely injured may be unable to communicate in response to an officer’s investigatory efforts outside the home. Thus, the apparent exigencies of a domestic disturbance situation are not necessarily negated when officers find a quiet residence while promptly responding to a report of violence. See People v. Chavez, 240 P.3d 448, 452 (Colo. Ct. App. 2010) (exigencies heightened when officers arrived within minutes of domestic emergency call reporting physical assault but home was dark and no one answered officers’ repeated knocks on front door). Whether the actions of the police are objectively reasonable is to be judged by the circumstances known to them. Black, 482 F.3d at 1040.

Here, to be sure, one explanation for the silence that confronted the officers upon their arrival and their initial attempt to confirm or refute the 911 call could have been because the 911 call was in error or not genuine. However, the non-responsiveness also could reasonably have been an indication that the 911 call was legitimate, and the silence was due to the victim’s physical incapacity, intimidation by a still-present abuser, or fear of seeking police intervention. Because the report of domestic violence was reasonably specific, and because domestic abuse cases involve inherent exigencies, we conclude that the officers’ entry into the residence without a warrant to search for an injured or otherwise non-responsive domestic abuse victim was objectively reasonable under the totality of circumstances. Indeed, the officers would have been remiss in their duty had they abandoned the scene simply because no one answered the door. We agree that “[e]rring on the side of caution is exactly what we expect of conscientious police officers where rescue is the objective, rather than a search for crime, “and [w]e should not second-guess the officers’ objectively reasonable decision [to enter and search a residence without a warrant] in such a case.” Black, 482 F.3d at 1040.

We reiterate that we do not recognize a per se exigency in domestic abuse situations, and we caution that entry and search in the context of a rescue is limited to proper police attempts to find a person in need of assistance, based on a reasonable belief that such a person will be inside the area searched. A reasonable belief must be based on the totality of the circumstances, which may include the exigencies inherent when a report of domestic violence is being promptly investigated. A rescue search is not a search for evidence of criminal activity; here, the officers clearly testified that their only reason for entering the residence was their concern for the safety of a potential domestic abuse victim. The police did not search for any weapons or other evidence of criminal activity. The subsequent search for evidence of criminal activity was conducted only after and pursuant to the issuance of a search warrant (the propriety of which has not been challenged below or on appeal) after the police discovered the unresponsive victim and had her transported to a hospital trauma unit. On this record, we are satisfied that the PCRA court did not err in concluding that the officers entered the home based on their reasonable belief that a victim would be found inside who needed immediate police assistance. Accordingly, we agree with the PCRA court that the officers’ entry into the home was justified under the recognized “persons in immediate need of assistance” exigency exception to the warrant requirement, and we affirm the court’s denial of relief to Appellant on his derivative post-conviction claim that trial counsel were ineffective for failing to seek suppression.