CA11: Police get QI for entry on a civil assist to recover property from former lover’s house

Police officers had qualified immunity for entry into plaintiff’s home with his estranged lover who came back with the police to assist to recover her belongings. Plaintiff’s guns were seized because he was under a domestic abuse injunction to not possess firearms. Criminal charges were filed and then dismissed. Fish v. Brown, 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 17778 (11th Cir. Oct. 3, 2016):

Heav’n has no Rage like Love to Hatred turn’d Nor Hell a Fury like a Woman Scorn’d
William Congreve, The Mourning Bride Act III, Scene viii (1697).

Harold Anthony Fish, generally known as “Tony,” is an unmarried man. There is no evidence that he ever read William Congreve’s play, but the events leading to this appeal demonstrate that he learned the painful truth of Congreve’s observation from his former lover, Margo Denise Riesco. Fish began a sexual relationship with Riesco on some undisclosed date in 2008. Throughout their affair, Riesco resided in Alabama with her husband, but she periodically traveled to Fish’s home in a rural area near Bonifay, Florida, where she stayed with him for as long as a week at a time. Fish asked Riesco to leave her husband in late 2010, but she declined to do so. Fish reacted by calling Riesco’s husband and disclosing their affair. That not only ended the relationship, but unsurprisingly caused Riesco to develop “animosity or ill feelings toward Mr. Fish.”

On March 11, 2011, following the end of the affair, a Florida Circuit Court entered an injunction in favor of Fish’s sister and brother-in-law, protecting them from acts of domestic violence by Fish. Among other things, he was prohibited from having any firearm in his “care, custody, possession or control.” Riesco learned of the injunction from Fish’s sister, with whom she had maintained a friendship.

. . .

Even so, like the district court, we need not determine whether defendants violated Fish’s Fourth Amendment rights by stepping into his sunroom without his explicit consent, because we find that they are entitled to qualified immunity on any such claim. Defendants followed Riesco, whom they knew was familiar with Fish’s home. She parked her automobile in the rear of the house, next to Fish’s SUV. No vehicles were parked in front of the house. Riesco walked confidently from her auto to and through the sunroom door without knocking, or checking to see if it was locked (as though she expected it to be unlocked). She proceeded to walk straight through the sunroom to the interior wood door and knocked. Reisco’s authoritative demeanor caused Deputies Harrison and Loucks to conclude that was the customary route taken by guests entering the house, and they followed her lead.