{"id":7545,"date":"2013-04-14T11:13:13","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T08:49:43","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T08:49:43","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=7545","title":{"rendered":"CA10: A foot in a shutting house door is an entry into the home"},"content":{"rendered":"

A foot in a shutting house door is an entry into the home, and qualified immunity was properly denied. Dalcour v. City of Lakewood<\/a>, 492 Fed. Appx. 924 (10th Cir. 2012):<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court has clearly established that Fourth Amendment protection starts at the physical limits of a home. See Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 741 (2002) (warning that \u201cofficials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law even in novel factual circumstances\u201d). The Court has \u201cshifted the qualified immunity analysis from a scavenger hunt for prior cases with precisely the same facts toward the more relevant inquiry of whether the law put officials on fair notice that the described conduct was unconstitutional.\u201d Gomes v. Wood, 451 F.3d 1122, 1134 (10th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). \u201c[A] general constitutional rule … can apply with obvious clarity to the specific conduct in question, even though [such conduct] has not previously been held unlawful.\u201d Anderson v. Blake, 469 F.3d 910, 914 (10th Cir. 2006) (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). In sum, the qualified immunity analysis requires that we determine whether a reasonable officer would have known that the conduct at issue was unconstitutional. <\/p>\n

In the present case, based on the extensive Supreme Court and Tenth Circuit precedent emphasizing the significance of any physical intrusion into a home, a reasonable officer should have known that placing a foot into the doorway amounted to an entry of the home for Fourth Amendment purposes. Because the facts presented do not establish an objectively reasonable basis for believing anyone in the home needed immediate aid or that there was any other exigent circumstance which would justify a warrantless entry, the district court erred in granting Agent Gillespie qualified immunity. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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