Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Guardian Mindset podcast. My name is attorney Eric Daigle. I'm happy to have you back again for the next edition. And like I said to you in a few editions ago that the Supreme Court's going to start dropping some cases and there's one we've been paying attention to that we knew was going to drop timely to that last application, and that's a case named Case versus Montana. Yeah, I can't make that up. When they put the this is actually a case that's of case. So this is a Fourth Amendment emergency aid exception called Case versus Montana. And this is a situation where police under the topic of whether police may enter a home without a warrant based on reasonable suspicion of an emergency or whether the emergency aid exception requires probable cause. And when we look at these type of issues, why does it matter? Why does it matter to law enforcement? Well, this case will clarify the constitutional standards for Warren less entry during welfare or crisis calls critical for police response to mental health crisis, 911 welfare checks and or other potential emergencies. So today, sponsored by the DLG Learning Center, I'm happy to bring you a quick overview of this case that is Case and talk about the issues on the table.
[00:01:22] So this case, United States Supreme Court, clarified the constitutional standards for warrantless entry into a residence under the emergency aid exception of the Fourth Amendment. The court held that officers may enter a home without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that an occupant is seriously injured or in imminent danger. The court rejected in this case both a strict probable cause requirement and a lower reasonable suspicion standard reaffirming a reasonable based reasonableness based emergency aid doctrine.
[00:01:57] I think that this decision has direct implications for welfare checks, mental health crisis calls, suicide threats, domestic disturbance responses, and other medical emergencies. You know, we're definitely going to have you look at your department policies related to clarifying this constitutional standard.
[00:02:18] So in order to address this issue before we get into the case itself, we got to do a little bit of a review. Right?
[00:02:25] And the best way to start with this is that the emergency aid exception under the Fourth Amendment federal application comes under the exigence circumstances standard. And we know that exigence circumstances exist in general terms when there is a compelling need for official action and no time to secure a warrant, end quote. That's Michigan versus Tyler 40, 436 U.S. 499, 1978. Now, the way we teach the emergency exception to fall under the exigent circumstances application is that it's a now or never application, right? We got to get in there for a reason.
[00:03:09] If you look at the history of exigent circumstances, the court says in applying the exigent circumstances exception, courts consider all the facts and circumstances of a particular case to determine whether in essence, the police were truly confronted with a now or never situation. That comes from a great case in 2013, Missouri vs McNeely, 569 US 141, in which a Missouri trooper took blood from Mr. McNeely, basically took him right to the emergency room to have his blood drawn. And the court asked, well, why did we do that? And the trooper came back and said, well, it's exigency, you know, now or never. The blood stays in the system and the alcohol and the blood dissipates, and therefore we're going to lose our evidence. And the court in Missouri versus McNeely said the scope of any warrantless exigence circumstance search is strictly limited by the demands of the exigency.
[00:04:08] The Fourth Amendment draws its sharpest line at the front door of a home. But in the context of modern policing, the line is often blurred as it increasingly begins to intersect with mental health crisis response by law enforcement, and the need to render emergency aid.
[00:04:26] So we're going to have to look at and we're going to get into detail, but I'm just going to give you a little overview. Right now, we're going to have to look at the exception of emergencies. And what we know is that police may enter a private residence without a warrant if they possess an objectively reasonable belief that an occupant may be in immediate danger or in need of aid. And these come from a 2006 Supreme Court case, Brigham City vs. Stewart, 547 U.S. 938, 2006, and a 2009 case, Michigan vs.
[00:05:03] And that's 558 U.S. 45.
[00:05:06] And in both these situations, in Brigham City vs.
[00:05:12] Brigham City vs. Stewart, the court said officers may enter a home without a warrant to render emergency aid. And in Michigan vs Fisher, the court said emergency entry justified where officers reasonably believe that someone inside needs aid.
[00:05:28] All right, well, let's work down to this case called case.
[00:05:34] On January 14, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States addressed the intersection in Case versus Montana, where the high court considered whether law enforcement may enter a home without a search warrant based on less than probable cause that an emergency is occurring, or whether the emergency aid exception requires that that officers have probable cause for such intrusion as they typically would when Investigating a crime.
[00:06:01] The unanimous opinion leaves no space for uncertainty as the court reinforced a long standing principle that it has held before. That is, quote, an officer may enter a home without a warrant if they have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that an occupant is seriously injured or. Or threatened with such injury. And that's Brigham City as we talked about. So let's get into the facts of this case here.
[00:06:30] In September 2021, William Case's ex girlfriend called police after a troubling phone conversation between the couple. During the call, Case threatened suicide, and the girlfriend believed he was intoxicated because of his erratic behavior.
[00:06:46] She became even more alarmed when he mentioned getting a note or something like that before committing suicide.
[00:06:53] She warned Case that she would call and report this information to the police, to which Case responded by threatening to harm any officers who came to his home.
[00:07:02] According to the girlfriend, the phone call ended with a pop followed by silence, which the girlfriend believed resembled the sound of a gunshot. Unable to get Case to verbally respond to her, she contacted the police and drove to his residence.
[00:07:19] When law enforcement officers arrived, they attempted to contact Case by knocking and announcing their presence and by calling his name through an open window, but received no response.
[00:07:30] Through the windows of the residence, the officers observed empty bear cans, an empty handgun holster, and a notepad that they believed contained a suicide note.
[00:07:42] Prior to responding to this call, officers had noticed that had notice of Case's history of alcohol abuse, mental health issues, and, you know, previous suicide threats, including prior suicide by cop attempt. So they got a pretty good working background on this guy.
[00:07:59] Despite the urgency of the situation and credit to the officers, which I want to highlight here, the officers did not immediately force entry and instead remained on scene for approximately 40 minutes before entering the home.
[00:08:13] Now, some of you may be saying, well, Eric, why are you giving kudos to that?
[00:08:18] Where is the exigency? And the key part is, the one thing that I know here in the history of court interpretations is that the more that we can look at the current situation, we can address the challenges that are faced, and we can do so in a very methodical application, the better it's going to be. So, as I would tell you all the time, I really appreciate the fact that these officers, hey, they, they arrived, they tried to make contact, they knocked and announced, they looked through the windows. They took their time before deciding to go inside the residence.
[00:08:55] And so at the time, the officers finally made warrantless entry into Case's residence, they advanced with weapons drawn due to the girlfriend's report that case had threatened to harm any officer who came to his home.
[00:09:09] While clearing the residence, a sergeant discovered case in an upstairs bedroom closet. When case suddenly opened the closet curtain, the sergeant saw what he believed to be a dark object positioned at case's waist, prompting the sergeant to discharge a single shot into case's abdomen. A handgun was later recovered and a laundry hamper next to where case fell.
[00:09:34] All right, so let's look at the procedural history of this case.
[00:09:39] In the aftermath of this incident, Case was charged with assault on a police officer.
[00:09:45] When this case reached the district court, Mr. Case filed a motion to suppress the evidence obtained from the warrantless entry, arguing that the warrantless entry violated the fourth amendment. The lower court denied the suppression motion, and a jury convicted him. Case appealed. Mr. Case. That is the district court's denial of the suppression motion to the Montana supreme court, which ultimately affirmed his conviction. Holding that the warrantless entry into the residence was proper under the fourth amendment, the court concluded that the entry in this case was justified under the community caretaking doctrine, which, as you all recall, necessitates that police officers need only have, quote, objective, specific and articulable facts, end quote, to suspect that a citizen needs help. This language is consistent with the reasonable suspicion standard and in the Montana supreme court's view, requires only reasonable suspicion that an Emergency exists.
[00:10:51] Case. Mr. Case sought review of the supreme court of the United States, and the court granted certiori to resolve a split among the lower courts on the appropriate standard to apply under the emergency aid exception to the fourth amendment warrant requirement. So, as you all know, we've seen this multiple times in case before.
[00:11:10] When the supreme court takes on a case, usually they do so to attempt to clarify a outstanding issue that has inconsistent application between the circuit court of appeals across the country. And that's exactly what happens here. But so this case now goes to the supreme court of the United States.
[00:11:32] The supreme court began its analysis by outlining the foundational precedents that together support its conclusion that the probable cause standard borrowed from the criminal context is inapt, which applied to the emergency aid exception. First, going back to what we talked about, we're going to go back to Brigham city v. Stuart. In a 2006 Supreme Court case where the supreme court held that police officers may enter a home without a warrant if they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that someone inside needs emergency assistance. The supreme court cited the Brigham standard to clarify that this language does not require nor imply probable cause because the probable cause requirement is rooted in and derives its meaning from the criminal context, and the court therefore explained that it declines to transplant it to this different one. In the court's words, Brigham City's reasonableness standard means just what it says.
[00:12:38] I like the way the court said this with no further gloss. And here it was satisfied because the police had an objectively reasonable basis for believing that a homeowner intended to take his own life and indeed may have already shot himself.
[00:12:55] Second, the court relied on its precedent from 2009, Michigan vs Fisher, which relied on the same emergency aid standard from the Brigham City In Fisher, officers responded to a neighbor's call, encountering broken windows, blood on the scene, and observed a man inside screaming and throwing things. In that case, the court held that officer's entry was reasonable because officers had an objectively reasonable basis for believing someone inside the home required immediate emergency aid.
[00:13:31] Lastly, the court pointed out to its prior 2021 case, Caniglia vs. Strom, 593 US 194, to clarify what does not justify a home entry. In Conniglia, the court rejected the community caretaking justification for warrantless home entries and reaffirmed that under Brigham, officers may enter a home to render emergency aid, emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent injury. However, it emphasized that the emergency conditions were indeed necessary, refusing to permit an open ended license. The court likes those phrases for warrantless entry under the caretaking function. In the Caniglia case. This is a case where a drunk driver was evading an officer after attempting to be stopped and the drunk driver pulled into his garage and the officer, thinking outside the box as the garage door was coming in or coming down, took a ball, a basketball from the front yard and rolled the basketball under the door to kick the door back up. And when asked what the basis to go in there was, the court turned around and the argument was that it was under the emergency exception and with a community caretaking justification. And the court came back and said, well, that's not sufficient, that's not going to work here because the real reason that the officer went into the house was to arrest the drunk driver.
[00:15:06] So the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Case's argument that officers created the likely danger by triggering a potential suicide by cop and that if the officers had left it alone, nothing would have occurred. Importantly, the court reiterated that, quote, the objective reasonableness of an officer's conduct under Brigham City, as in other fourth Amendment context, is evaluated by by looking at the totality of the circumstances and by the way they are now Highlighting Barnes versus Felix, something we've spent a lot of time looking at over the past couple of years, the court recognizing Mr. Case's point regarding the potential provocation that would lead to the confrontation. The court acknowledged that this danger was undoubtedly one of the many consideration factors into this analysis. However, the court recited the overwhelming circumstances that justify officers entry being that Mr. Case may have already shot himself or would do so absent intervention. The Supreme Court concluded that the officer's decision to enter his home to prevent that result despite serious danger to the officers themselves was I love this question, quote at least reasonable, end quote. The fourth Amendment did not require them, as Case now now argues, to leave him to his fate.
[00:16:35] The 90 opinion concluded with the following note.
[00:16:39] We repeat today that we have held be what we have held before.
[00:16:44] An officer may enter a home without a warrant if he has, quote, an objectively reasonable basis for believing that that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury. The officer's entry satisfies that test. Accordingly, the Supreme Court affirms the judgment, even not all the reasoning of the Montana Supreme Court.
[00:17:10] So the objective factors I want you to take into consideration as to the operational issues is what is the objective indicators of emergency? What were the facts known at the time that would leave a reason reasonable officer to believe a person is injured or unconscious, a suicidal threat or attempt is reported, there is a credible report of gunshot or violent sounds, medical distress, domestic violence with possible injury, repeated unanswered attempts to contact an at risk person the perceived threat involving the immediacy should involve serious bodily injury or or imminent harm and there is limited purpose. Officers may enter to locate and assist the endangered person. They must conduct a protective sweep limited to the emergency. Officers may not in the scope of an emergency exception, conduct a general evidence search and they cannot use the emergency as a pretext for the search.
[00:18:18] When we're looking at policy applications, we must focus on the emergency aid. Entry in the policy language in your agency should be something like Officers may enter a dwelling without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis based on specific and articulable facts to believe that 1 an occupant is seriously injured or 2 an occupant is threatened with imminent serious harm and 3 the immediate entry is necessary to render assistance or prevent injury.
[00:18:53] Such entries into the residence shall be limited in scope and duration to the emergency at hand. They should cease once the emergency has been resolved and they are not to be used as a pretext for a criminal investigation any further Search and seizure post the emergency aid entry shall comply with either a warrant requirement or another recognized exception to the warrant requirement.
[00:19:21] Once officers are faced with this situation, the officer shall document a few things. Number one, the specific facts indicating an emergency.
[00:19:31] Number two, the source of that information.
[00:19:34] Number three, the reason why entry was necessary without a warrant, the action taken by the officers once inside the residence and when and how the emergency was resolved.
[00:19:48] The supervisors who are responding to this should confirm proper application of the emergency aid standard and the scope and duration is consistent with the policy and application.
[00:20:02] So as we wrap up this analysis, let's do so with best practices recommendations.
[00:20:10] Well, in order to align with national standards and risk management principles, the first is crisis response integration.
[00:20:19] The more that we can respond to this intersection of mental health and fourth amendment with coordinated efforts between CIT teams, co responder models and behavioral health partners.
[00:20:34] I do always highly recommend in these situations based on the significance that officers make sure supervisors are notified and I would even recommend that they wait till the supervisor arrives on scene.
[00:20:49] Supervisor at the very minimal, my recommendation to you would be that supervisor notification should occur when the warrantless home entry occurs and there is a use of force which directly results from welfare or crisis calls.
[00:21:06] In this situation, the body worn camera and the documentation of the video from the body worn camera will be very necessary.
[00:21:15] Activate the cameras before entry when feasible, verbally document the reasonable for the entry and the observations upon arrival.
[00:21:25] And a lot of this can be put to use specifically under the application of scenario based training. So finally, as a wrap up in making sure we're clarifying the 2026 Supreme Court ruling under the emergency entry rule, we know one thing. You may enter a home without a warrant when you have an objectively reasonable belief someone inside is seriously hurt or in immediate danger.
[00:21:56] You must be able to explain the facts showing the emergency and limit your actions to addressing the emergency.
[00:22:05] And more importantly, you may not use the entry as a pretext to search for evidence and a general basis. So as I take the opportunity to give you a review of of the latest supreme court decision from January 14, 2026, specifically Case vs. Montana and the application of the emergency aid exception, which is definitely something that we use on a regular basis, I hope that this helps you have a better understanding of where the court looked and said no, we don't need a probable cause standard, we just need a reasonable basis standard in order to enter the home. And that information should be should be there. I would also suggest because some of you will fall under uniqueness to your legal interpretations under the emergency aid that I would suggest, and I've seen this in a couple of cases is if you're responding to an emergency aid response application, check your in house computer system. See if you have contact information for the home or the people in the home, specifically issues such as, you know, cell phone numbers that you could attempt to reach out. The more attempts that you make and the more different aspects that you attempt to reach out to will be will be very beneficial for you to articulate in the aspect of the necessaryness related to entering the residence and so the more steps that you do to do there. Now by the way, I also like to remember remind you that these are also difficult situations. Sometimes you're faced with a situation where you're standing outside the residence and there's not much to work with.
[00:23:49] You know, you have a call from a family member, a 911 call, you have something that identifies an emergency inside but you have limited evidence in which to react to. My question is have you met the reasonable basis application to determine that someone inside is having an emergency?
[00:24:10] I thank you for your time. I thank you the DLG Learning center and especially our weekly Path of the Guardian training program where you could get more up to date legal updates like this on a regular basis. If that's something that you're interested in, Please go to www.dlglearningcenter.com. check out our Path of the Guardian. Now remember, you can do so as an agency or you can even do so individually and you will see that application and the ability to get 52 weeks of 10 minute videos relevant to necessary case law as they're presented across the country. And as I wrap up this podcast, I'd like to thank you for your continued efforts in listening and sharing the podcast with those who you work with. We want to make sure that this information gets out to as many people as possible. And you know, especially when new case drops, especially case that's strong like this one, we want to make sure that everybody has that information in their repertoire in order to be able to use it as they deal with the challenges that they do so in patrol on a daily basis. So I'll end this as I end all of my podcast. Help those who need your help, protect those who need your protection and most importantly, keep yourself and others safe. Thank you. Be well. See you next time.
