A rape report and the potential evanescent nature of the evidence justified a warrantless entry into defendant\u2019s hotel room. He also was on probation. United States v. Jones, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43102 (S.D. Miss. Mar. 3, 2026):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The victim reported the alleged rape to the Brookhaven police in the early morning hours of Saturday, February 3, 2024. The perishable nature of sexual assault evidence (i.e., semen, blood, and bodily fluids) supports the urgent need for the police to secure the motel room quickly and prevent any destruction, loss, removal or diminishment of evidence such as sheets, bedding, clothing, underwear, condoms, towels and tissues. Hr’g Tr. [ECF No. 49] at, e.g., 10, 12, 19, 36; see also Gov’t Hr’g Ex. 3 (video of police bodycam showing search of Motel 6, Room 125) [ECF No. 42-3] (filed conventionally).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fact that Defendant was in violation of his probation order and subject to an active MDOC arrest warrant also supports the urgency of the situation. Bodycam video that was entered into evidence at the hearing shows that the police arrived at the motel room around 5:42 a.m. on February 3, 2024, and, as the government points out, this was not on a weekday when a court would be open and readily available to issue a search warrant. [ECF No. 36] at 9; accord United States v. Ojonugwa, No. 3:12-CR-132-M(1), 2013 WL 1747801, at *6 (N.D. Tex. Apr. 23, 2013) (“The Court further notes that the officers would likely have experienced a delay in obtaining a warrant between 3 and 6 a.m. on a Saturday \u2026.”).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A rape report and the potential evanescent nature of the evidence justified a warrantless entry into defendant\u2019s hotel room. He also was on probation. United States v. Jones, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43102 (S.D. Miss. Mar. 3, 2026):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emergency-exigency","category-probationparole-search"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63456"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63458,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63456\/revisions\/63458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}