{"id":2716,"date":"2009-03-21T06:32:01","date_gmt":"2008-11-28T09:34:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-28T09:34:31","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2716","title":{"rendered":"CA11: Warrantless arrest 6′ inside defendant’s door violated Fourth Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warrantless arrest just inside the doorway was a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Summary judgment for defense on qualified immunity reversed. Shepard v. Davis<\/a>, 300 Fed. Appx. 832 (11th Cir. 2008) (unpublished):<\/p>\n

Construing the factual allegations in the light most favorable to Shepard, the record shows that Shepard opened the door in response to the officers’ knock and announcement, asked, “May I help you?”, to which Officer Davis replied, “We are here to arrest you[;] [y]ou are Dwayne Shepard correct?” After confirming his identity, Shepard asked the officers for a warrant. According to Shepard’s amended complaint, the officers then entered through the front door, grabbed Shepard by the arm, and pushed him about six feet into the living room. Nothing in Shepard’s amended complaint places him in the threshold or inside the doorway. Rather, Shepard alleges the officers came through the door and pushed him six feet back into the living room and onto his sofa. The officers arrested Shepard on the sofa. Shepard’s response to the motion to dismiss adds that he “remained standing inside of his home” at all material times. However, even ignoring that response, the amended complaint itself does not place Shepard in the threshold or inside the doorway.<\/p>\n

Accordingly, construing the facts in the light most favorable to Shepard, Officer Budnick did not have Shepard’s consent, either express or implied, to enter the home and arrest him in his living room, six feet within his home. Although one may voluntarily surrender to the police at the door, the facts alleged here show that Shepard neither surrendered to the police nor had an opportunity to do so. See McClish, 483 F.3d at 1241. Consequently, Officer Budnick violated Shepard’s constitutional rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. We now examine whether those rights were clearly established on August 5, 2002, the date the arrest occurred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}