While Venesia and Bill are off this week, take a look at what Bill would have decided in Lange v. California, a case we will be discussing next week!
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES[1]
LANGE v. CALIFORNIA
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE CALIFORNIA COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST DISTRICT, DIVISION 5
JUSTICE KEHOE delivered the opinion of the Court.
“Hot or Not”, an attractiveness rating website from the early 2000s, presented users a binary choice: is the person in photo in front of me “hot or not”? The vulgar yet simple choice enticed users to the once popular platform. Similarly, California asks the court to simplify a Fourth Amendment exception analysis, whether a pursuit is “hot or not” – meaning whether exigent circumstances exist to forego the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment – to a bright line test on a new federal common law misdemeanor-felony distinction. We decline to take that opportunity and reverse the holding of the lower court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
One evening in October 2016, at roughly 10:20pm, Arthur Gregory Lange was observed by a police officer “playing music very loudly” and honking his horn at seemingly nothing while his car was parked next to Highway 12 in Sonoma County. Both are non-felonious infractions of the California Vehicle Code, see Veh. Code, § 27001 and id. § 27007.[2] The officer duly followed when Lange left his parking spot, intending to conduct a traffic stop. This pursuit took the officer through a neighborhood, where Lange obeyed traffic laws and eventually stopped at a stop sign. After resuming the trip, the officer turned on his overheard lights and Lange subsequently turned into a driveway several hundred feet down the road, pulling into a garage. The officer followed[3], exited his cruiser, and placed his boot in front of the garage sensor just in time for the door to halt its descent and allow a conversation with Lange. It became clear that Lange was intoxicated, and Lange was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.
The questions before this court include: 1) is there a rule defining hot pursuit of a suspected misdemeanor offender, and 2) does that rule on hot pursuit place this case within the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement? We decline to establish a rule defining hot pursuit along a bright felony-misdemeanor line and hold: no, there was no hot pursuit to establish exigent circumstances in this case.
Our first foray into the hot pursuit doctrine in Warden v. Hayden[4] leaves ample discretion to police officers. “The Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to delay in the course of an investigation if to do so would gravely endanger their lives or the lives of others,” Id. Establishing that danger and exigency within the totality of circumstances has since been a question for the fact finder in the case. The facts of this case do not present an appropriate opportunity to revisit our prior holdings. No life was in danger as Lange proceeded down his driveway and into his garage. Evidence of the crime, driving while intoxicated, could have been acquired at many occasions before he returned home, but was only present after a warrantless search. The exigencies in this situation are far from clear; speed in police action was far from essential.
Additionally, respondents ask us to establish a federal rule on the bifurcation of misdemeanors and felonies, a task historically left to the states. This, they claim, would allow courts to bypass the discrepancy between states on what classifies as a felony. If the line were simply drawn at “felony as defined by the state”, individuals fleeing after being caught auctioning off a rabbit in California would be party to a hot pursuit while those fleeing police after a beatdown outside a Massachusetts bar may not[5]. A federal definition of felony would negate this issue. However, as this case does not cleanly fall within this court’s precedent on exigency, we decline to establish a bright line rule.
In the absence of a rule created here, we rely on our existing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to determine if exigent circumstances existed in this case. No exigency exists in pursuing someone suspected of a non-jailable traffic offense; the hot-pursuit exception is inapplicable in that instance, see Welsh v. Wisconsin[6]. From the time when the officer began following Lange to when the officer turned on the police cruiser’s overhead lights, no hot pursuit existed. To this point, only minor traffic infractions occurred. There is no record of any other unlawful conduct. The brief time from which the officer turned on his lights to when Lange entered his garage give way to “the probable cause to believe Lange intended to evade a detention initiated in a public place.”[7] The question is if this probable cause translates into an exigent circumstance under a totality of the circumstances within the hot pursuit doctrine. We hold that it does not.
As defined in Warden v. Hayden, exigency exists where a search is essential to preventing danger to the lives of police officers or others. Here, the only potential exigency is created when Lange evades detention by the officer. Even if this court applies the findings of the lower court[8], evading detention for a misdemeanor traffic infraction absent any other evidence of wrongdoing cannot create a situation where exigency exists. The danger of a municipality or state government losing out on a several hundred dollar fine cannot establish exigency of a level dangerous enough to forego constitutional protections.
Additionally, respondent contends that a fleeing suspect cannot use the home as refuge when they know they are being pursued, see US v. Santana.[9] In this case, a suspect retreated back into the home from the porch where she had witnessed undercover agents arrest heroin dealers. These dealers had acquired said heroin from the woman in question. In the majority opinion, Justice Rehnquist held that Santana did not have an expectation of privacy, as from the porch, she was exposed to the world and could reasonably believe arrest was imminent.
Respondent misunderstands the holding of this case. Yes, the police officer arresting Lange had probable cause to believe Lange was evading detention, but under US v. Santana, we must ascertain Lange’s expectation of privacy. There have been no findings in the record as to Lange’s expectation of privacy; knowledge of pursuit is still in question. Even if Lange was aware of the brief pursuit, his situation can be distinguished from Santana’s as here, no imminent danger to life or loss of evidence existed, while in Santana this danger was present.
The rules of the road are important to an ordered society, but minor infractions and a short ride up the driveway into a garage do not destroy the constitutional protections of the home. We reverse the judgment of the California Court of Appeals for the First District, Division 5 and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
[1] The actual opinion was just released on June 23, 2021. I write this as if I had actually been confirmed to sit on the Supreme Court. Hilarious, I know. See link to the oral argument: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-18. [2] Both infractions are punishable by a fine of several hundred dollars. [3] At low, neighborhood speeds. [4] 387 U.S. 294 (1967). [5] Rabbit and battery example taken from Justice Breyer at oral argument, see: 38:49-39:17. [6] 466 U.S. 740 (1984). [7] People v. Lange, WL 5654385 (2019). [8] Which, by itself, is severely in question, see the dash camera and body camera footage submitted into evidence. [9] 427 U.S. 38 (1976).
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