{"id":2751,"date":"2009-02-07T08:45:46","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T05:45:26","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T05:50:11","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2751","title":{"rendered":"DE finally adopts community caretaking exception"},"content":{"rendered":"

Delaware finally adopts community caretaking exception, in an interesting opinion with an overview of the entire exception. Williams v. State<\/a>, 962 A.2d 210 (Del. December 2, 2008):<\/p>\n

In order to balance this caretaking function with the fundamental protections guaranteed by the Delaware and United States Constitutions, we must ascertain that the encounter was part of the police officer’s community caretaker function; that the officer’s actions during it remained within the caretaking function; and that once the caretaking function had ceased, either the encounter was terminated, or some other justification existed for its continuance. We find that the test promulgated by the Montana Supreme Court in State v. Lovegren, properly balances these concerns. Following an in-depth analysis of various concerns informing the community caretaker doctrine, the Supreme Court of Montana adopted the following three-part test to ensure its proper application:<\/p>\n

First, as long as there are objective, specific and articulable facts from which an experienced officer would suspect that a citizen is in need of help or is in peril, then that officer has the right to stop and investigate. Second, if the citizen is in need of aid, then the officer may take appropriate action to render assistance or mitigate the peril. Third, once, however, the officer is assured that the citizen is not in peril or is no longer in need of assistance or that the peril has been mitigated, then any actions beyond that constitute a seizure implicating \u2026 the protections provided by the Fourth Amendment, but more importantly, those greater guarantees afforded under [state law]. <\/p>\n

We adopt this test to ensure that investigations conducted in Delaware under the community caretaker doctrine are reasonable.<\/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-2751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751","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=2751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}