NY2: Stabbing victim and blood trail back to apartment were exigency justifying entry

While talking to the victim of a stabbing in an apartment building, the officer determined that the victim lived there despite his denials. There was a blood trail back to the apartment, which the officer followed, finding drugs and drug paraphernalia in the apartment. Under New York’s Mitchell standard, viewed through Brigham City, the People showed sufficient emergency to justify the entry. The officer did not have to know that there was somebody else injured. People v. Rodriguez, 2010 NY Slip Op 6530, 2010 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 6617 (2d Dept. August 31, 2010):

Emergencies are analytically distinct from other exigent circumstances (see 3 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 6.6, n 6). The Fourth Amendment is concerned with reasonable probabilities (see Hill v California, 401 U.S. 797, 804, 91 S. Ct. 1106, 28 L. Ed. 2d 484), and the emergency doctrine is not as exacting as general probable cause analysis (see People v DePaula, 179 AD2d at 426 [noting that the basis for the belief that an emergency existed does not have to meet the probable cause standard]). Indeed, our jurisprudence demonstrates that entry into a home is permissible without a warrant if law enforcement officers reasonably believe that emergency assistance is needed (see People v Desmarat, 38 AD3d at 915 [“objective facts observed by the police provided them with a reasonable basis to believe that an emergency was at hand, that other persons may have been at risk of injury, and that the emergency was associated with (a particular room)”] [emphasis added]; People v Manning, 301 AD2d 661, 663, 756 N.Y.S.2d 58 [“facts were sufficient to support the detective’s belief that there might have been an injured woman in the defendant’s apartment”] [emphasis added]; People v Longboat, 278 AD2d 836, 836, 718 N.Y.S.2d 761 [holding that the hearing court, based on the officer’s testimony, properly determined that the entry was justified by an emergency, “i.e., the perception that an injured person might be in the apartment”] [emphasis added]; see also Michigan v Fisher,US, 130 S Ct 546, 549, 175 L. Ed. 2d 410 [concluding that it was objectively reasonable for the police officers, who observed the defendant throwing things inside his home, to believe that the defendant’s projectiles “might have” a human target or that he would hurt himself; “Officers do not need ironclad proof of a likely serious, life-threatening injury to invoke the emergency aid exception”] [emphasis added]; Brigham City v Stuart, 547 U.S. at 406 [concluding that “the officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing both that the injured adult might need help and that the violence in the kitchen was just beginning”] [emphasis added]; State v Linton, 146 Ariz 184, 185, 704 P2d 825, 826 [concluding that “it was not unreasonable for the officers to believe that a helpless victim might be lying within the house”] [emphasis added]).

The defendant contends that because there was no report of a missing person, and no reason for the officers to believe that there were more than two people involved in the incident, both of whom had been accounted for just prior to the officers’ entry into apartment 3L, there was no objective basis to believe that there was an emergency justifying entry into the apartment. We disagree. …