{"id":3607,"date":"2010-02-11T16:13:58","date_gmt":"2009-12-07T18:10:03","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-07T18:10:03","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=3607","title":{"rendered":"SCOTUS decides emergency entry case on cert. papers: Michigan v. Fisher<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court decided an emergency entry case today Michigan v. Fisher<\/a>, 2009 U.S. LEXIS 8773 (December 7, 2009) (per curiam), on the cert papers, reversing the Michigan Court of Appeals which suppressed an entry into a house where a guy was inside going “crazy” and the officers could see a bloody hand. To the Court, that was essentially the same as Brigham City v. Stuart<\/a>, 547 U. S. 398 (2006), on the severity of the injury.<\/p>\n

Even a casual review of Brigham City reveals the flaw in this reasoning. Officers do not need ironclad proof of \u201ca likely serious, life-threatening\u201d injury to invoke the emergency aid exception. The only injury police could confirm in Brigham City was the bloody lip they saw the juvenile inflict upon the adult. Fisher argues that the officers here could not have been motivated by a perceived need to provide medical assistance, since they never summoned emergency medical personnel. This would have no bearing, of course, upon their need to assure that Fisher was not endangering someone else in the house. Moreover, even if the failure to summon medical personnel conclusively established that Goolsby did not subjectively believe, when he entered the house, that Fisher or someone else was seriously injured (which is doubtful), the test, as we have said, is not what Goolsby believed, but whether there was \u201can objectively reasonable basis for believing\u201dthat medical assistance was needed, or persons were in danger, Brigham City, supra, at 406; Mincey, supra, at 392.<\/p>\n

It was error for the Michigan Court of Appeals to re-place that objective inquiry into appearances with its hindsight determination that there was in fact no emergency. It does not meet the needs of law enforcement or the demands of public safety to require officers to walk away from a situation like the one they encountered here. Only when an apparent threat has become an actual harm can officers rule out innocuous explanations for ominous circumstances. But \u201c[t]he role of a peace officer includes preventing violence and restoring order, not simply rendering first aid to casualties.\u201d Brigham City, supra, at 406. It sufficed to invoke the emergency aid exception that it was reasonable to believe that Fisher had hurt himself (albeit nonfatally) and needed treatment that in his rage he was unable to provide, or that Fisher was about to hurt, or had already hurt, someone else. The Michigan Court of Appeals required more than what the Fourth Amendment demands.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dissenting was Stevens, joined by Sotomayor, complaining that the trial court apparently got it right that Michigan law required proof that immediate aid was required, and here there was insufficient proof of that.<\/p>\n

Today, without having heard Officer Goolsby\u2019s testimony, this Court decides that the trial judge got it wrong. I am not persuaded that he did, but even if we make that assumption, it is hard to see how the Court is justified in micromanaging the day-to-day business of state tribunals making fact-intensive decisions of this kind. We ought not usurp the role of the factfinder when faced with a close question of the reasonableness of an officer\u2019s actions, particularly in a case tried in a state court. I therefore respectfully dissent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Accordingly, there is nothing here to discern Sotomayor’s Fourth Amendment leanings, yet.<\/p>\n

Detroit News has an article on the case this afternoon<\/a>. <\/p>\n

SCOTUSWiki<\/a> does not include it yet, but likely soon.<\/p>\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-3607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607","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=3607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}