MA: Info there might be armed men holding a hostage inside justified entry

“In this case, the police had information that there might be armed men holding a woman in an apartment against her will. In the circumstances presented here, so long as the officers had ‘an objectively reasonable basis to believe’ that the emergency continued because there might be an armed individual hidden somewhere in the apartment, a protective sweep of the apartment, limited to what was necessary to see if there was a person hiding, was permissible.” Commonwealth v. Jones, 2020 Mass. App. LEXIS 105 (July 24, 2020).

The entry wasn’t the cause of the officers getting a search warrant; they already had probable cause to get one. “By contrast, the district court here did make the requisite factual finding that the officers’ observations during the warrantless entry did not prompt their decision to seek a warrant. [¶] Second, we conclude that after excising the evidence discovered during the initial search, the remaining information in the search warrant affidavit was sufficient to ‘provide a neutral magistrate with probable cause to issue a warrant.’” United States v. Richardson, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 23351 (9th Cir. July 24, 2020).*