The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on June 2 to consider whether police need to obtain a warrant to enter a home in an emergency.
According to the appeal, a man was allegedly suicidal but was charged with assault after the police entered his home, allegedly to help him.
The court granted the petition in Case v. Montana in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented.
The case goes back to Sept. 27, 2021, when William Trevor Case was shot by local police after they entered his Montana home.
Law enforcement had arrived at the home after receiving a telephone call from Case’s ex-girlfriend reporting that he was threatening to kill himself. The police officers did not contemplate obtaining a warrant to enter the residence because, as one officer said, “It wasn’t a criminal thing. [They] were going in to assist him,” according to a summary in the Montana Supreme Court ruling of Aug. 6, 2024.
After Case failed to respond to knocking on the door, police looked through a window and saw an empty handgun holster. The officers were reluctant to enter the residence because the ex-girlfriend had informed them that he had threatened to harm not just himself, but also police officers, and because they knew about Case’s mental health issues, according to the summary.
Eventually, police entered through an unlocked front door and moved to the upstairs bedroom, where they found Case with what an officer thought was a gun. An officer then shot Case in the abdomen.
At trial, one officer testified that Case had an “aggressive-like look on his face” and “gritted” teeth. The officer also said he saw what looked like “a black object coming out of the curtain,” which he believed was a gun, and that he thought he was about to be fired on, according to the summary.
Moments later, another officer “noticed and secured a handgun that was lying in a laundry hamper just outside the closet, next to Case,” the summary stated.
Case was charged with felony-level assault on a peace officer.
Assault doesn’t necessarily involve a person suffering physical injury. Assault can be defined as an act that causes another person to reasonably fear that harmful or offensive touching is going to take place, even if no physical contact actually follows.
Case moved to suppress the evidence of the alleged assault obtained from the warrantless entry, arguing that it was inadmissible because it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from unreasonable government searches and seizures, according to the petition that Case filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on Dec. 4, 2024.
At trial, the motion to exclude the evidence based on unlawful police entry was denied, and Case was convicted.
On appeal, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed 4–3 the denial of the suppression motion, finding that the community caretaker doctrine applied. The doctrine holds that police don’t always operate as law enforcement officials investigating wrongdoing, but sometimes may function as community caretakers to prevent harm in emergencies, according to the petition.
The state high court upheld the conviction and found that police officers had “objective, specific, and articulable facts” showing that Case was in need of help because he was “suicidal and potentially intoxicated.”
The court held that the doctrine applies “when a peace officer acts on a duty to promptly investigate situations ‘in which a citizen may be in peril or need some type of assistance from an officer,’” the petition stated.
The court found that officers do not need to have probable cause for an emergency to justify making a warrantless entry.
Probable cause allows police to arrest someone, carry out a search, or seize property. There is probable cause to enter a home without a warrant when there is a threat to public safety or a belief that a crime is being committed or that evidence is in danger of being destroyed.
Case urged the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the appeal to resolve a split among appeals courts about whether the “‘reasonable basis’ standard for the emergency-aid exception [requires] probable cause.”
Montana, three other states, and three federal courts of appeals, have all allowed police “to enter a home on less than probable cause—a reasonable ‘belief’ or ‘suspicion’ that someone inside is in urgent need of help.” By contrast, two other states and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Second, and 11th Circuits have required probable cause for warrantless entry, according to the petition.
Montana had asked the U.S. Supreme Court not to take the appeal.
In an April 2 brief, the state said the Montana Supreme Court reached the “correct result.”
Also, there is no split among appeals courts that needs to be resolved, according to the brief.
“States and lower federal courts have articulated different standards to evaluate whether a warrantless entry into a home to render emergency aid is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Yet it is not clear on the ground that there is any daylight between an officer having an ‘objectively reasonable belief’ that someone may need assistance or probable cause to believe that they do,” the brief stated.
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in its next term, which begins in October.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 4, 2025, in The Epoch Times.