DPS Legal Review

OFFICERS HAD “OBJECTIVELY REASONABLE BASIS” FOR WARRANTLESS ENTRY INTO HOME

William Case (“Case”) called his ex-girlfriend, J.H., and told her that “he was going to kill himself.” J.H. was alarmed by Case’s “erratic” tone, especially since Case “became more methodical about what he was going to do.” Case threatened that he was “going to get a note” (by which he seemed to mean a suicide note) for either J.H. or others to find. Next J.H. heard a “clicking” sound, as if Case had cocked a gun. When J.H. then told Case that “she was going to call the police,” Case said that “he would shoot them all too.” After J.H. heard a popping noise, Case failed to respond when she screamed his name “a few times[.]” This led J.H. to believe that Case had shot himself, “[s]o she called 9–1–1 to report the incident and drove as fast as she could to Case’s home.”

J.H. was met by three police officers outside of Case’s house, located in a small town in Montana. The officers were familiar with Case’s “history of alcohol abuse and mental-health issues[.]” They also knew that Case “had previously threatened suicide at the school where he worked; and that he had once seemed to attempt ‘suicide-by-cop,’ by confronting the police in a way that was likely to provoke a lethal response.” Given the seriousness of the situation, the officers requested that the police chief respond to the scene.

While the officers awaited the chief’s arrival, “they circled the house looking for signs of injury or danger.” They also “knocked on the doors and yelled into an open window, but got no response.” When the officers shined their flashlights inside Case’s house, “they saw no sign of Case[,]” but “could make out empty beer cans, an empty handgun holster, and a notepad with writing on it, which they took to be the suicide note Case had mentioned to J. H.”

After the chief arrived, he and the officers discussed the situation and “decided to enter the house ‘to render emergency aid.’” The officers considered a number of scenarios they might encounter upon entering the house, the best of which would be that Case had not yet injured himself and they could dissuade him from doing so. Given what J.H. had told the officers, they realized there was a chance “that Case had already shot himself and might be ‘in there bleeding.’” The officers also considered that, if Case had not harmed himself, “their entry could spark a confrontation.” Therefore, the officers “equipped themselves with long-barrel guns and a ballistic shield before [entering Case’s house].”

Approximately 40 minutes after arriving at Case’s house, the officers walked through the front door, “announced themselves loudly, and continued to call out as they walked through the home.” Case did not respond to the officers and, after one of the officers entered an upstairs bedroom, Case threw open a curtain to the bedroom closet, in which he was hiding. As Case appeared from behind the curtain, he held “a black object” that looked like a firearm. Concerned that he might be shot by Case, one of the officers fired his rifle. The bullet struck Case in the abdomen, and another officer quickly began giving Case first aid.

Case was transported to the hospital by ambulance to be treated for the gunshot wound. In the meantime, another officer “found a handgun in a laundry basket next to the place where Case had stood.”
After Case was charged with assaulting a police officer, he filed a motion to suppress “all evidence obtained as a result of the home entry, arguing that the police had violated the Fourth Amendment by coming into his house without a warrant.” The trial court denied Case’s motion, finding that “the police officers were responding legitimately to an ‘emergency.’” Case was subsequently convicted by a Montana jury on the assault charge. Case appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, which upheld the trial court’s ruling.

Case then petitioned the United States Supreme Court to grant a writ of certiorari, which is the process by which a party requests that the Supreme Court review the decision of a lower court (usually either a United States Court of Appeals or the highest court of any state). The Supreme Court granted certiorari, “because courts have differed on whether police officers entering a home to provide emergency aid need ‘probable cause’ to believe that an occupant is in peril.”

The Supreme Court concluded “that [any probable cause] standard, borrowed from the criminal context, is inapt.” Instead, the Court “[held] just what we have held before: that the officers may enter if, but only if, they have an ‘objectively reasonable basis for believing’ that an occupant faces serious danger.” The Supreme Court’s opinion emphasized its rulings in three previous decisions, each of which this summary will discuss in turn.

1. Brigham City v. Stuart (2006)

The police responded to a noise complaint and, when looking through a kitchen window, saw a physical fight between a teen and “several adults.” The officers witnessed the teenager “[punch] one of the adults in the face, ‘sending [him] to the sink spitting blood.’” Given the circumstances, the police “immediately entered the home through a nearby screen door and, announcing their presence, caused the fight to cease.”
The Supreme Court decided unanimously that the police’s warrantless entry in this case was “reasonable under the circumstances” because “[t]he officers had ‘an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant [was] seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.’”

     2. Michigan v. Fisher (2009)

In Fisher, the police were dispatched (at a neighbor’s request) to a scene where
[t]hree windows were broken, with the glass strewn on the ground outside; blood was smeared on one of the doors, as well as on the smashed-in hood of a pickup truck in the driveway; and, visible through a window, a man inside the house was “screaming and throwing things” at an unseen target.
As in Brigham City, the Supreme Court held that the officers’ entry into the home was “reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” because the officers “had ‘an objectively reasonable basis for believing’ that an occupant of the home needed immediate aid.”

    3. Caniglia v. Strom (2021)

The police responded to Caniglia’s home “after his wife reported that he was suicidal.” Caniglia and the officers spoke on his front porch and Caniglia “agreed to go to a hospital for psychiatric testing.”
After Caniglia left for the hospital, the police entered his home “and took away two handguns he owned.” Although the lower courts “approved the entry on the ground that the officers were performing ‘community caretaking functions[,]’” the Supreme Court “declined to recognize such an ‘open-ended license’ for law enforcement officers to enter private homes.” The Court acknowledged Brigham City’s holding “that officers may enter a home to ‘render emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent injury.’” However, the Court pointed out, the officers who entered Caniglia’s home and seized two of his handguns “had never tried to defend their entry on that basis.”

Consistent with its reasoning in Brigham City, Fisher, and Caniglia, the Supreme Court rejected the position taken by Case’s attorney in a brief filed with the Court, i.e., that law enforcement must have “probable cause” before making a warrantless entry into a home when emergency conditions exist:

What the test really requires, Case contends, is that police officers “have probable cause to believe [an occupant is] seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.” Case reaches that conclusion based mainly on the Fourth Amendment’s recognition of the “sanctity of the home.” Given that special status, he argues, a home entry’s aid-giving, “noninvestigatory purpose” should make no difference: The same probable-cause principles used in deciding whether “criminal activity [is] afoot” should apply as well in “assessing the risk and gravity of an emergency.

The Supreme Court opined: “We decline Case’s invitation to put a new probable-cause spin onto Brigham City.” The “probable cause” standard, the Court noted, “is ‘rooted’ in the ‘criminal investigatory context.’” This standard, the Court wrote, “has acquired meaning over time by virtue of that context, as judges have assessed, in case after case, the requisite likelihood of finding criminal contraband or evidence.” The Supreme Court stressed that legal precedent decided by judges in these criminal cases “would fit awkwardly, if at all, in the non-criminal, non-investigatory setting at issue here.”
Therefore, the Court explained, instead of “strain[ing] to relate probable-cause decisions to emergency-aid situations,” the Brigham City Court “asked simply whether an officer had ‘an objectively reasonable basis for believing’ that his entry was direly needed to prevent or deal with serious harm.” The Court stressed, however, “that an emergency-aid entry provides no basis to search the premises beyond what is reasonably needed to deal with the emergency while maintaining the officers’ safety.”

As to Case’s petition, the Supreme Court underscored: “We repeat today what we have held before: An officer may enter a home without a warrant if he has ‘an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.’”

For the foregoing reasons, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Montana Supreme Court, which upheld the trial court’s ruling that the officers’ warrantless entry into Case’s house was lawful. Case v. Montana, No. 24–624, 146 S. Ct. 500 (U.S., Jan. 14, 2026).

Georgia Court of Appeals

DEPUTY HAD ARTICULABLE SUSPICION TO CONDUCT TRAFFIC STOP BASED ON THE TOTALITY OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES

On August 2, 2024, a Tift County sheriff’s deputy (“deputy”) was on patrol when a concerned citizen called 911 to report an “erratic driver.” The 911 caller relayed that, while driving in his own white truck hauling a cattle trailer, he observed the vehicle in front of him, a white Volvo, “failing to maintain its lane and driving into the oncoming lane of traffic.”

The deputy “observed a vehicle matching the 911 caller’s description being driven by a woman later identified as Burkhalter.” Once the deputy turned his patrol car around to follow the Volvo, Burkhalter “pulled off onto a side road and pulled over.” At some point while the deputy was following the Volvo, he radioed another deputy: “[S]he’s on the white line[.]”

After the deputy’s vehicle passed the Volvo, Burkhalter “pulled back out into the road[,]” only to exit the roadway again and pull into a gas station parking lot. When Burkhalter then exited the parking lot and attempted to turn into another parking lot, the deputy initiated a traffic stop of her vehicle.

As the deputy and Burkhalter spoke he told her “that her tires were on the white line, and that’s failure to maintain lane.” He and another officer on the scene “observed indicators of intoxication and Burkhalter was arrested and charged with driving under the influence.” Burkhalter subsequently filed a motion to suppress evidence obtained during the DUI traffic stop.

During the trial court suppression hearing, the deputy testified “that he initiated a traffic stop because he saw the vehicle ‘getting on to the white line, failing to maintain her lane.’” He described the tires of Burkhalter’s Volvo as being “on the line[.]” However, when asked if he could remember whether the tires “crossed over the line[,]” the deputy could not remember.

Georgia law provides that

Whenever any roadway has been divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for traffic . . .[a] vehicle shall be driven as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane and shall not be moved from such lane until the driver has first ascertained that such movement can be made with safety[.]

(O.C.G.A. § 40-6-48(1))

During the hearing, the deputy was also asked “whether he understood that driving on a white line does not constitute failure to maintain lane[.]” The deputy testified, “I haven’t seen anything that defines if it’s on the line or over the line.” He testified further: “[W]henever I read the failure to maintain code section, it says failure to drive within a single lane.”

The deputy also testified “that he alternatively could have initiated a traffic stop based on the report of reckless driving in the 911 call and his articulable reasonable suspicion that the driver was under the influence.” Additionally, the deputy’s incident report regarding his traffic stop of Burkhalter stated “that he found her behavior to be evasive, as she pulled off the road multiple times after he began following her in his patrol car.”

The trial court denied Burkhalter’s motion, finding “that so long as [the deputy] had a good faith, reasonable belief that Burkhalter was violating the law, his traffic stop was legal.” The court reasoned that, even if the deputy was mistaken regarding whether driving on the white line violated the failure-to-maintain-lane statute, “[he] had reasonable articulable suspicion to believe that a traffic offense was being committed, rendering the stop lawful.”

Burkhalter appealed from the trial court’s decision, arguing “that the trial court erred in finding that the arresting officer had the legal authority to initiate the traffic stop.”

In its review of the trial court’s decision, the Georgia Court of Appeals (“Court of Appeals” or “Court”) looked to its 2023 decision in the Chapman case, in which the Court wrote: “To initiate a traffic stop, an officer must have specific, articulable facts sufficient to give rise to a reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct. It is well established that a stop is authorized if the officer observes a traffic violation.” The Chapman court explained that

[w]here an officer reasonably but mistakenly believes that certain conduct violates the law, the observation of that conduct can serve as reasonable suspicion if the officer’s mistake of law was objectively reasonable. To determine whether an officer’s mistake of law was reasonable, courts must engage in a straightforward question of statutory construction. If the law in question is genuinely ambiguous, such that overturning the officer’s judgment requires hard interpretive work, then the officer has made a reasonable mistake.

In Chapman, the Court of Appeals held that “a motorist does not violate OCGA § 40-6-48(1) when [s]he drives on, but does not cross over, a fog line.” Therefore, with respect to Burkhalter’s case, the Court explained, “the law is not ambiguous on this issue, and [the deputy’s] mistake of law could not serve as the legal basis for the traffic stop.”

After acknowledging this lack of ambiguity regarding O.C.G.A. § 40-6-48(1), the Court noted:

That said, in this case, the officer’s mistaken belief that he observed a traffic violation was not the only evidence in the record relating to the decision to initiate a traffic stop. . .
Here, even assuming [the deputy] did not directly observe a specific traffic violation, the totality of the circumstances supported [his] articulable suspicion—he received notice of a civilian emergency report that Burkhalter’s vehicle was driving erratically and dangerously, and [the deputy] was able to confirm information from the 911 call when he observed a white truck with a cattle trailer following a white Volvo SUV (matching the caller’s descriptions) in the area. [The deputy] then observed evasive behavior from Burkhalter when she repeatedly left the roadway after his patrol car pulled up behind her. Thus, [the deputy] “nonetheless had reasonable articulable suspicion to stop [Burkhalter] … whether or not [s]he was [failing to maintain her lane].”

For these reasons, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s order on Burkhalter’s motion to suppress. Burkhalter v. State, No. A25A1991, 2026 WL 251607, (Ga. Ct. App., Jan. 30, 2026).