United States v. Billy Deon Butler
980 F.2d 619, 1992 U.S. App. LEXIS 30967, 1992 WL 341796 (1992)
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Rule of Law:
A law enforcement officer may conduct a limited, warrantless entry into an arrestee's home, following an arrest outside, if the entry is for the legitimate and non-pretextual purpose of protecting the arrestee from a significant and immediate threat to their health and safety.
Facts:
- Two Deputy U.S. Marshals and two county sheriff's officers arrived at Billy Deon Butler's rural trailer home to serve an arrest warrant.
- The ground surrounding the trailer was littered with debris, including broken glass and several hundred beer cans.
- Butler emerged from the trailer and was placed under arrest by Marshal Allberry in the yard.
- At the time of his arrest, Butler was barefoot.
- Marshal Allberry, noticing the broken glass on the ground near Butler's feet, determined there was no safe path to the police vehicles.
- Allberry initiated the entry into the trailer by telling Butler, “Well, let’s go on in and get them [shoes].”
- The officer accompanied Butler into his bedroom to retrieve the shoes.
- Inside the bedroom, the officer observed a loaded shotgun in plain view next to Butler's bed.
Procedural Posture:
- Billy Deon Butler was indicted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma for being a felon in possession of a firearm.
- Butler filed a pretrial motion to suppress the firearm as evidence, arguing it was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
- The district court, the court of first instance, denied the motion to suppress.
- Following a trial, a jury found Butler guilty.
- Butler, as appellant, appealed the district court's denial of his motion to suppress to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, against the United States, the appellee.
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Issue:
Does a police officer's warrantless entry into an arrestee's home, initiated by the officer to retrieve shoes for the barefoot arrestee due to hazardous ground conditions, violate the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures?
Opinions:
Majority - Kelly, J.
No. A police officer's warrantless entry into an arrestee's home to retrieve footwear does not violate the Fourth Amendment when there is a legitimate and significant threat to the arrestee's health and safety. The court reasoned that the broken glass on the ground posed a serious and non-pretextual risk to Butler. This situation is distinguished from cases where entry was for mere convenience, such as in United States v. Anthon where the arrestee was only in swim trunks. Instead, the court found the officers' actions were a duty to protect the arrestee from harm, similar to precedents like United States v. Titus, where officers properly entered a residence to find clothing for a naked arrestee on a cold night. Therefore, the immediate safety concern constituted a circumstance justifying the limited intrusion, making the officer's presence in the bedroom lawful and the subsequent seizure of the firearm under the plain view doctrine permissible.
Dissenting - Seymour, J.
Yes. The warrantless entry into Butler's home violated the Fourth Amendment because the circumstances were not sufficiently exigent to overcome the strong constitutional protection of the home. The dissent argued that the Fourth Amendment draws a 'firm line at the entrance to the house' that can only be crossed without a warrant under truly exigent circumstances, which were absent here. Butler had just traversed the yard barefoot without injury and did not request shoes, indicating the threat was not immediate or severe. This case is indistinguishable from Anthon, where being improperly dressed was not an exigency, and the majority trivializes the exception by equating a littered yard with a true emergency. Furthermore, the majority's reliance on Washington v. Chrisman is misplaced, as the entry in that case was at the arrestee's request, not initiated by the officer.
Analysis:
This decision establishes a narrow 'arrestee safety' exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement for entering a home. It extends the principle of Washington v. Chrisman, which permitted entry upon an arrestee's request, to situations where an officer initiates the entry out of a non-pretextual concern for the arrestee's immediate safety. The ruling blurs the 'firm line at the entrance to the house' from Payton v. New York by allowing officer-initiated entry based on an objective assessment of risk. Future litigation will likely focus on defining the threshold for what constitutes a 'legitimate and significant threat' versus mere inconvenience that would not justify such a warrantless intrusion.
