{"id":7942,"date":"2013-01-07T05:28:42","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T09:38:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T09:38:31","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=7942","title":{"rendered":"CA7: Entry into defendant’s fenced backyard two hours after a shooting was still justified under exigency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officers saw bullet holes in a car next to defendant\u2019s fenced backyard and shell casings. While two hours had passed and there were 20 officers in the area, the entry was justified because of the risk of a wounded person, not a gunman. United States v. Schmidt<\/a>, 700 F.3d 934 (7th Cir. 2012):<\/p>\n

At the time of the search, gunshots had recently been heard in the neighborhood. Bullet holes were in a car that was adjacent to the backyard, bullet holes were in the 1424\/1426 duplex itself, and there was a trail of about nine spent casings on the ground nearby, including five right next to the 1424\/1426 duplex and one in the yard. These circumstances, taken together, made it reasonable for an officer to believe, at the time of the search, that people in the backyard area may have recently been shot and in need of immediate aid.<\/p>\n

Schmidt principally argues that by the time of the search, two hours had already passed since the shots were fired and over 20 officers had blanketed the block. But the prime exigency in this case was the potential for wounded victims, not necessarily the threat of further shooting. If a victim had been shot in the yard, as a reasonable officer could have suspected, that victim would not have become any less wounded after two hours had passed; to the contrary, he would need immediate aid. It would not have made sense for an officer to wait for a warrant when a shooting victim could have been dying in the yard, and the officer also did not need to know that someone had actually been shot in order to go into the yard. …<\/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-7942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942","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=7942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}