MA: Two entries a day apart were still justified under emergency aid exception

Officers entered defendant’s home looking for his missing wife and daughter and only performed a cursory walk through. The next day they came back to look for anything that might tell them where they were, and then they smelled decomposing bodies. The entries were valid, and the second entry was still justified under the emergency aid exception. Defendant was arrested in the U.K. and extradited, having flown there after the murders. Commonwealth v. Entwistle, 463 Mass. 205, 973 N.E.2d 115 (2012):

An objective analyst who knew what Sergeant Sutton knew — that he had taken only one or two steps into the master bedroom, that he did not have an unobstructed view of the entire bedroom from that vantage point, and that he had not entered the bathroom off the master bedroom — would conclude that the search conducted after the first entry had not reasonably eliminated the risk that a missing person was in need of assistance inside the home. Because the risk that the Entwistle family had suffered serious harm had grown more acute with another day having passed with no sign of the family and no word as to their whereabouts, there continued to be an objectively reasonable basis to enter the home again to search for them in areas that had not yet been searched, including the bathroom adjoining the master bedroom and the unexamined portion of the master bedroom. Contrast Peters, supra at 825 (“once three officers had swept through every room and saw nothing suspicious, it was extraordinarily unlikely that a dead or injured victim was within the house” [emphasis added]). Therefore, even though this was not the subjective basis relied on by the officers in making this second entry, we conclude that the second entry was justified under the emergency aid exception based on this separate and objectively reasonable basis for the entry.

The entry on January 22. When the police next entered the house on Sunday, January 22, there was an even greater objective basis to fear for the health and safety of the Entwistle family. Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since the first entry, and there was still no word from the defendant or his wife. Inquiries to local area hospitals in the previous twenty-four hours had yielded no results. The police knew from the first entry that the Entwistle automobile was not in the garage, but no relevant law enforcement query had been made regarding the vehicle and no police department had located the vehicle in response to the Hopkinton police broadcast. The family and friends of the defendant’s wife were so concerned that they wished to report the family as missing persons.

Previously, as to turning on a camera to see if the pictures would tell them anything:

In contrast, Officer O’Neil’s observation of the dates of the last photographs taken on the digital camera was not in plain view because he had to “turn on” the camera in order to determine the dates of the photographs. See id. (“Under Hicks, [supra,] it is clear that the Fourth Amendment forbids handling an item to expose something hidden”). We recognize that something more than a search for victims or suspects may be appropriate under the emergency aid exception where entry was made to search for a missing person, the missing person was not found within the house, and there is an objectively reasonable basis to believe that information in the home might shed light on her whereabouts. But we need not reach that issue here because, even if the officer’s search of the camera were unconstitutional, it proved harmless. All that was learned from the inspection of the camera was that photographs had last been taken on Thursday, January 19, and this evidence was cumulative of other testimony that the defendant’s wife was alive on that day. Having carefully reviewed the record, we conclude “beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” Commonwealth v. Vasquez, 456 Mass. 350, 355 (2010), quoting Commonwealth v. Peixoto, 430 Mass. 654, 660 (2000).

As to the camera search, is it logical to look at the camera to see if the pictures shed any light on the missing persons? Why not? But, the court doesn’t even decide it. Apparently nothing remotely incriminating was found. The pictures would potentially show when the missing were last seen.

Defendant told the police that he saw the bodies and left the U.S. to go back to England, where he was a citizen and originally met his wife when she was a student, without calling the police to report the murders. He bought a one way ticket. Could it be reasonably concluded that defendant abandoned his house and any reasonable expectation of privacy in it because, sooner or later, the decomp would become overwhelming and be smelled from outside by anybody in the area? This is never discussed by the court, but it is completely plausible.