TN: Crime scene personnel permitted to enter under initial exigency of a beating with a crowbar

Crime scene personnel were responding to the initial call of a potential murder in the house, and they were all permitted in by the initial exigency. State v. Hutchison, 2016 Tenn. LEXIS 1 (Jan. 14, 2016):

In this case, the Court of Criminal Appeals relied heavily on Coulter and held that “the entry of officers arriving subsequent to Officer Shaffer was a continuation of his original entry.” Hutchison, 2014 WL 1423240, at *16-17. It noted: “[A]ll of the officers, detectives, and crime scene technicians were essentially responding at the same time. Officer Shaffer only arrived as quickly as he did because he was already in the area.” Id. at *17. The majority of the evidence, the Court of Criminal Appeals held, was in plain view, and its admission into evidence did not violate the Fourth Amendment. Id.

Courts in other jurisdictions have held in accord. In State v. O’Donnell, New Jersey’s intermediate appellate court considered “whether evidence observed in plain view during a police entry into a residence to provide emergency aid may be seized without a warrant even though there is a short delay between the emergency aid entry and the seizure of evidence by other police officers responsible for processing the crime scene.” State v. O’Donnell , 974 A.2d 420, 421 (N.J. App. Div. 2009), aff’d, 1 A.3d 604 (2010). In that case, police responded to a call about an unconscious child. They arrived to find the child dead and the mother sitting on a couch with blood on her hands, rambling incoherently. Id. Several officers had responded to the initial call; some took the mother into custody and others remained to secure the home. Id. at 422. About forty minutes later, before the child’s body had been removed, investigators arrived and seized evidence, including various medications lying about in the home. Id. After the trial judge refused to suppress the evidence seized at the home, the defendant mother pled guilty and reserved for appeal the question of the admissibility of the evidence seized after officers responded to the initial call. Id. at 423.

Considering the issue, the New Jersey court in O’Donnell first noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499 (1978), in which firefighters put out a fire during the night and then returned four hours later, when it became light, to complete their investigation. O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 424. O’Donnell observed that the Tyler Court held that the evidence seized by fire investigators in the morning investigation was not seized in violation of the defendant’s constitutional rights, explaining that “the morning entries were no more than an actual continuation of the first, and the lack of a warrant thus did not invalidate the resulting seizure of evidence.” O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 424 (quoting Tyler, 436 U.S. at 511).

. . .

We agree with this reasoning. It would be anomalous indeed to hold that law enforcement, having lawfully entered the Defendant’s home under exigent circumstances and encountered evidence in plain view, must then obtain a search warrant in order to examine that same evidence. Under the circumstances presented in this case, we conclude that the entry into the home by the officers and KPD investigators and technicians who followed Officer Shaffer constituted a “mere continuation” of Officer Shaffer’s lawful entry into the home under exigent circumstances. Therefore, evidence in plain view in the home could be examined, photographed, seized and processed by them without a search warrant. We agree with the New Jersey court in O’Donnell and the Connecticut court in Magnano that this conclusion “furthers the goal of effective law enforcement, and promotes the rationale and purpose of the plain view doctrine.” O’Donnell, 974 A.2d at 425 (quoting Magnano, 528 A.2d at 764). We affirm the holding of the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals on this issue.