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Where's the emergency? [NOT FINAL]

By Randall Hodgkinson

Steven Staker of the Junction City Public Defender Office won in State v. Jeffery, No. 97,251 (Kan. App. Jan. 11, 2008), reversing a Geary County drug conviction. The prosecution had claimed that the search in this case was a valid exercise of the emergency aid doctrine exception. The COA had little difficulty with that claim:

Junction City police officers were dispatched to Phillip Jeffery's apartment. The officers had been told that the resident there had cut his wrists and attempted to hang himself in a tree. When officers knocked on the door, Jeffery initially wouldn't open it, which left officers rightly concerned about his welfare if they did nothing to help him. Jeffery did open the door with the security chain attached at least once while the officers continued to knock and spoke with a neighbor. When Jeffery finally opened the door without the security chain attached, officers rushed him, ordered him to lie on the floor, and handcuffed him.

This is the point at which the plot thickens for the purposes of this appeal. Officers then searched the full apartment in walk-through fashion; they said that they were looking either for any person who might be injured or any weapons that Jeffery might use to hurt himself or others. But they had already taken Jeffery into their custody, and an officer testified at trial that they planned to take Jeffery from his home for a mental-health evaluation. The officers had no information suggesting that anyone else was in the home, and there was no immediate danger that the handcuffed Jeffery would use anything found elsewhere in the apartment to hurt himself. The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects us from a warrantless search of our home except in limited circumstances. As we will soon discuss, none of the exceptions are applicable here because there was no reason to go elsewhere in the apartment to address the situation that the officers confronted. We thus conclude that the marijuana and drug paraphernalia found during the search of Jeffery's apartment cannot be used against him.

It may be a little thing, but I appreciate Judge Leben noting that the "Fourth Amendment . . . protects us" not just criminals or drug dealers, but every one of us.

Here is the coverage on FourthAmendment.com.

Full post as published by Kansas Defenders on January 16, 2008 (boomark / email).