NY: Coercing a suspect out of his home for a warrantless arrest violates Payton

Coercing a suspect out of his home for a warrantless arrest violates Payton. [But here, the error is harmless on the murder and assault charges.] People v. Shaw, 2026 NY Slip Op 00961, 2026 N.Y. LEXIS 130 (Feb. 19, 2026):

The defendant contends that even though he was taken into custody outside the apartment, his arrest nonetheless violated his rights conferred by the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 12 of the New York Constitution, under a theory of “constructive entry.” Although Payton does not squarely address these circumstances, it makes clear that the home lies at the “very core” of the Fourth Amendment (id. at 589-590; see also People v Minley, 68 NY2d 952, 953 [1986] [“The evil to which the [Payton] rule is addressed is the unsupervised invasion of a citizen’s privacy in his own home.”]). When officers subject someone to a display of authority that induces them to exit the home under coercion, the sanctity of the home has been invaded to the same extent as if the officers had physically entered. Such a show of force violates Payton and renders an arrest unlawful under both the Fourth Amendment and the New York Constitution, just as it would be if the arrest occurred within the confines of the home itself.

That conclusion accords with the prevailing view of other courts that have considered the question. To give one example, the Ninth Circuit held that a defendant was arrested “inside his residence” for purposes of Payton when police “surrounded [his] trailer with their guns drawn, and ordered [him] to come outside,” and that subsequent consent by the defendant and his wife to search their trailer was therefore not voluntary (United States v Al-Azzawy, 784 F2d 890, 891-895 [9th Cir 1985]). Other courts have found Payton violations in similar circumstances (see United States v Saari, 272 F3d 804, 808-809 [6th Cir 2001] [defendant’s warrantless arrest “was accomplished while he was in his home” and thus violated Payton where “officers surrounded the house, flooded it with spotlights and summoned the defendant with a bullhorn”]; United States v Maez, 872 F2d 1444, 1449-50 [10th Cir 1989] [police “surrounded the (defendant’s) trailer, and with guns pointed at the home, asked him and his family to come out”]; United States v Nora, 765 F3d 1049, 1054 [9th Cir 2014] [defendant was arrested ” ‘inside’ his home for purposes of the Payton rule” where police “surround(ed the defendant’s) house and order(ed) him to come out at gunpoint”]; Sharrar v Felsing, 128 F3d 810, 819-820 [3d Cir 1997] [SWAT team surrounded the defendant’s home with guns pointed at the windows and ordered the defendant to leave the house]; Maloney v County of Nassau, 623 F Supp 2d 277, 288 [EDNY 2007] [citing “ample authority” “recogniz(ing) a Payton violation in the absence of a warrantless physical intrusion into the home”]; cf. United States v Allen, 813 F3d 76, 79 [2d Cir 2016] [arrest violated Payton where officers knocked on defendant’s door and told him “he would need to come down to the police station to be processed”]; State v Holeman, 103 Wash 2d 426, 429, 693 P2d 89, 91 [1985] [“A person’s home can be invaded to the same extent when the police remain outside the house and call a person to the door as when the police physically enter the household itself”]; State v Dahl, 323 Or 199, 209, 915 P2d 979, 986 [1996] [“Permitting the police, without a warrant … to seize a person inside his house by ordering that person to emerge from his house would be inconsistent with (Payton’s) well-established constitutional principle”]).

Nor do we share the dissent’s view that courts are meaningfully divided over whether Payton prohibits police from compelling a defendant to leave their home (see dissenting op at 17). To be sure, several federal circuit courts have held that warrantless arrests do not violate Payton where officers simply knock on a defendant’s door and ask them to come outside. But such “knock and talk” encounters are distinct from the use of coercive tactics to force a defendant out of the home (see United States v Thomas, 430 F3d 274, 278 [6th Cir 2005] [distinguishing a consensual “knock and talk” visit from an encounter where “police, while not entering the house, deploy overbearing tactics that essentially force the individual out of the home”]; Knight v Jacobson, 300 F3d 1272, 1278 n 5 [11th Cir 2002] [acknowledging “(s)ome courts have held that when the suspect leaves his home because of coercive tactics by the police, the arrest is illegal,” but finding “no such tactics in this case”]). Both United States v Berkowitz (927 F2d 1376, 1380 [7th Cir 1991]) and United States v Carrion (809 F2d 1120, 1123 [5th Cir 1987]), cited by the dissent (see dissenting op at 17 n 6), involved warrantless arrests at the doorway of a defendant’s home, after police knocked on the defendant’s door and the defendant voluntarily opened it, rather than allegations of constructive entry.

Our conclusion is also fully consistent with this Court’s precedent. We have permitted warrantless arrests where a defendant voluntarily comes to the doorway or exits their home, but those cases did not involve coercive police conduct. …

The crime was June 2018; the trial concluded August 16, 2019; the Appellate Division affirmed June 2024.