In Newman v. Underhill, published April 23, 2025, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for the defendant deputies. A suspect in a truck failed to stop for one of the defendant deputy's traffic stop. This was a felony. The deputy chased the suspect's truck. The truck stopped near the plaintiff's home. The suspect exited the truck and fled. The deputy followed on foot. He lost track of the suspect near the rear of the plaintiff's house. The deputy waited for backup. A second defendant deputy arrived two minutes later. The deputies searched the house's backyard while deputies in a helicopter searched the house for heat signatures. The deputies saw no indication that the suspect had left the backyard. The helicopter found heat coming from the house but did not know what was emitting it. The deputies discovered the back door of the house slightly ajar. Seven minutes after the suspect fled, the deputies began announcing their presence and ordering anyone inside to exit. They did so for two minutes. They heard a voice inside. A third defendant deputy arrived. The three entered the house. They encountered and argued with the plaintiff, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. The plaintiff told the deputies that his roommate drove a truck the make and model of the suspect's truck. After a few minutes of discussion, the plaintiff gave the deputies permission to search another room of the house. The suspect, the plaintiff's roommate, was hiding there. The plaintiff sued the officers for an unreasonable search in violation of the 4th Amendment. The district court granted the officers summary judgment.
The 9th Circuit found that the officers did not violate the plaintiff's 4th Amendment rights. Under the hot pursuit doctrine, the hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect can make a warrantless search of a residence objectively reasonable. The doctrine requires probable cause to search the home and pursuit of a fleeing suspect. Here, there was probable cause. The facts and circumstances before the officers were sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution to believe that the suspect would be found in the house. The doctrine also requires that the officers were in immediate and continuous pursuit of a suspect from the scene of the crime at the moment they made entry. Other relevant considerations include the gravity of the underlying offense for which the arrest is being made, and whether the officers encroached on the property of a person who did not create the exigent circumstances and was completely unrelated to the suspect and his crimes. Here, the suspect was suspected of committing a felony. The immediacy requirement was met because the first deputy immediately pursued the suspect when he fled. The continuity requirement was met because only nine minutes passed between the first deputy losing track of the suspect and the entry; and because during that time interval the deputy was actively working to find and apprehend the suspect.
Leave a Reply