Plaintiff kept 15 dogs in her house in squalor. She went out of town and didn’t provide for them. Her “associates” reported the situation to animal control and they entered the house and seized the animals. The entry and seizure was with exigent circumstances, and the officers are entitled to qualified immunity. More simply put: because of exigent circumstances, they did not violate the Fourth Amendment. King v. Montgomery County, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 44 (6th Cir. Jan. 3, 2020):
… The district court concluded that exigent circumstances justified Matos and Cook’s entry into King’s home. We agree.
Matos. Where a need for immediate action by government personnel makes obtaining a search warrant impracticable, those “exigent circumstances” can justify a warrantless entry. United Pet Supply, Inc. v. City of Chattanooga, 768 F.3d 464, 490 (6th Cir. 2014). Examples of exigent circumstances include situations in which officers have “the need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury.” Kovacic v. Cuyahoga Cty. Dep’t of Children and Family Servs., 724 F.3d 687, 695 (6th Cir 2013) (quoting Johnson v. City of Memphis, 617 F.3d 864, 868 (6th Cir. 2010)). This exception to the warrant requirement also allows officers to ensure the safety of animals exposed to dangerous exigent circumstances. See United Pet Supply, 768 F.3d at 490.
To our eye, the circumstances described to Matos would have led a reasonable officer to believe the dogs inside the home were in danger. Will told Matos that ammonia fumes made it difficult to breathe, that some of the dogs did not have food or water, and that the dogs needed urgent veterinary attention. Even while outside, Matos could smell the ammonia fumes himself. Will’s statements thus sufficiently apprised Matos of the seriousness of the situation.
Whether Matos over-estimated the danger the dogs actually faced is immaterial. See United States v. Brown, 449 F.3d 741, 750 (6th Cir. 2006) (holding that an officer’s warrantless entry into a home in response to a false alarm by a burglary-prevention system was nevertheless justified by exigent circumstances). The point of the exigent circumstances doctrine is to allow an officer to respond to a potential emergency. See id. at 749-50. The circumstances may ultimately prove less dire than imagined. See id. But we do not review an officer’s actions with the benefit of hindsight; we instead put ourselves in her shoes. Id. Nor do we fault an officer for bracing for the worst. True emergencies do not lend themselves to extensive reflection; delay can mean the difference between life and death. See United States v. Rohrig, 98 F.3d 1506, 1511 (6th Cir. 1996) (quoting United States v. Johnson, 9 F.3d 506, 508 (6th Cir. 1993) (discussing “inherent necessities”)). So long as officers make reasonable efforts to gather information before acting, the Constitution is no obstacle. See Brown, 449 F.3d at 749-50.
Cook. The same goes for Cook, the animal control officer. …
by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com / The Book www.johnwesleyhall.com
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't." —Me
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well." –Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others)
“I am still learning.” —Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)).
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848)
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams
v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold,
J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984).
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws,
or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence." —Mapp
v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987).
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that
bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the
police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater
than it is today."
— Terry
v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting).
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their
property."
—Entick
v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765)
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have
frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And
so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his
case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth
Amendment."
—United
States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated
here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman
v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the
bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona
v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987)
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly
exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth
Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in
an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz
v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967)
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to
protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born
to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United
States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted
intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by
government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose
it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United
States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989)
"You can't always get what you want /
But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration
camp]
“You know, most men would get discouraged by
now. Fortunately for you, I am not most men!”
---Pepé Le Pew
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers,
is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which
reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that
those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being
judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting
out crime."
—Johnson
v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948)