Search and Seizure — warrantless searches — exigent circumstances

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Search and Seizure — warrantless searches — exigent circumstances

Where police investigating a report of gunshot fire found numerous spent casings near a home, their entry onto the curtilage of the property was justified by exigent circumstances.

“At the time of the search, gunshots had recently been heard in the neighborhood. Bullet holes were in a car that was adjacent to the backyard, bullet holes were in the 1424/1426 duplex itself, and there was a trail of about nine spent casings on the ground nearby, including five right next to the 1424/1426 duplex and one in the yard. These circumstances, taken together, made it reasonable for an officer to believe, at the time of the search, that people in the backyard area may have recently been shot and in need of immediate aid.”

“Schmidt principally argues that by the time of the search, two hours had already passed since the shots were fired and over 20 officers had blanketed the block. But the prime exigency in this case was the potential for wounded victims, not necessarily the threat of further shooting. If a victim had been shot in the yard, as a reasonable officer could have suspected, that victim would not have become any less wounded after two hours had passed; to the contrary, he would need immediate aid. It would not have made sense for an officer to wait for a warrant when a shooting victim could have been dying in the yard, and the officer also did not need to know that someone had actually been shot in order to go into the yard.. See United States v. Brown, 64 F.3d 1083, 1086 (7th Cir. 1995) (it is unreasonable to think ‘that the police must stand outside [the] apartment, despite legitimate concerns about the welfare of the occupant, unless they can hear screams’). Schmidt emphasizes that the officer also intended to look for evidence, but we do not look at the subjective motivations of an officer when examining the objective basis for a finding of exigent circumstances. See Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 404 (2006) (‘An action is “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of the individual officer’s state of mind, “as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify [the] action.”’ (citation omitted)). We therefore conclude that the officer’s warrantless entry into the backyard was justified by exigent circumstances.”

Affirmed.

12-1738 U.S. v. Schmidt

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Adelman, J., Williams, J.