{"id":89,"date":"2021-03-25T23:36:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T03:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dougsdepot.com\/news-updates\/?p=89"},"modified":"2021-04-17T16:22:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T20:22:52","slug":"biden-administration-urges-supreme-court-to-let-cops-enter-homes-and-seize-guns-without-a-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dougsdepot.com\/news-updates\/biden-administration-urges-supreme-court-to-let-cops-enter-homes-and-seize-guns-without-a-warrant\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Let Cops Enter Homes And Seize Guns Without A Warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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People view the Supreme Court building from behind security fencing on Capitol Hill in Washington, … [+] <\/span>ASSOCIATED PRESS<\/small><\/p>\n\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n\nThe U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear oral argument in Caniglia v. Strom<\/em><\/a>, a case that could have sweeping consequences for policing, due process, and mental health, with the Biden Administration<\/a> and attorneys general from nine states<\/a> urging the High Court to uphold warrantless gun confiscation. But what would ultimately become a major Fourth Amendment case began with an elderly couple\u2019s spat over a coffee mug.\n
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<\/div><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nIn August 2015, 68-year-old Edward Caniglia joked to Kim, his wife of 22 years, that he didn\u2019t\u00a0use a certain coffee mug after his brother-in-law had used it because he \u201cmight catch a case of dishonesty.\u201d That quip quickly spiraled into an hour-long argument. Growing exhausted from the bickering, Edward stormed into his bedroom, grabbed an unloaded handgun, and put it on the kitchen table in front of his wife. With a flair for the dramatic, he then asked: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just shoot me and get me out of my misery?\u201d\n\nPerhaps unsurprisingly, the tactic backfired and the two continued to argue. Eventually, Edward took a drive to cool off. But when he returned, their argument flared up once again. This time, Kim decided to leave the house and spend the night at a motel. The next day, Kim phoned home. No answer.\n\nWorried, she called the police in Cranston, Rhode Island and asked them to perform a \u201cwell check\u201d on her husband and to escort her home. When they arrived, officers spoke with Edward on the back deck. According to an incident report, he \u201cseemed normal,\u201d \u201cwas calm for the most part,\u201d and even said \u201che would never commit suicide.\u201d\n\nHowever, none of the officers<\/a> had asked Edward any questions about the factors relating to his risk of suicide, risk of violence, or prior misuse of firearms. (Edward had no criminal record and no history of violence or self-harm.) In fact, one of the officers later admitted he \u201cdid not consult any specific psychological or psychiatric criteria\u201d or medical professionals for his decisions that day.\n\nStill, police were convinced that Edward could hurt himself and insisted he head to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. After refusing and insisting that his mental health wasn\u2019t their business, Edward agreed only after police (falsely) promised they wouldn\u2019t seize his guns while he was gone.\n\nCompounding the dishonesty, police then told Kim that Edward had consented to the confiscation. Believing the seizures were approved by her husband, Kim led the officers to the two handguns the couple owned, which were promptly seized. Even though Edward was immediately discharged from the hospital, police only returned the firearms after he filed a civil rights lawsuit against them.\n\nCritically, when police seized the guns, they didn\u2019t claim it was an emergency or to prevent imminent danger. Instead, the officers argued their actions were a form of \u201ccommunity caretaking,\u201d a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment\u2019s warrant requirement.\n\nFirst created<\/a> by the Supreme Court nearly 50 years ago, the community caretaking exception was designed for cases involving impounded cars and highway safety, on the grounds that police are often called to car accidents to remove nuisances like inoperable vehicles on public roads.\n\nBoth a district and appellate court upheld the seizures as \u201creasonable\u201d under the community caretaking exception. In deciding Caniglia\u2019s case, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals acknowledged<\/a> that \u201cthe doctrine\u2019s reach outside the motor vehicle context is ill-defined.\u201d Nevertheless, the court decided to extend that doctrine to cover private homes, ruling that the officers \u201cdid not exceed the proper province of their community caretaking responsibilities.\u201d\n\nSiding with law enforcement, the First Circuit noted that a police officer \u201cmust act as a master of all emergencies, who is \u2018expected to…provide an infinite variety of services to preserve and protect community safety.\u2019\u201d By letting police operate without a warrant, the community caretaking exception is \u201cdesigned to give police elbow room to take appropriate action,\u201d the court added.\n\nIn their opening brief for the Supreme Court, attorneys for Caniglia warned<\/a> that \u201cextending the community caretaking exception to homes would be anathema to the Fourth Amendment\u201d because it \u201cwould grant police a blank check to intrude upon the home.\u201d\n\nThat fear is not unwarranted. In jurisdictions that have extended the community caretaking exception to homes, \u201ceverything from loud music to leaky pipes have been used to justify warrantless invasion of the home,\u201d a joint amicus brief by the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the American Conservative Union revealed<\/a>.\n\nThis expansion could also have perverse effects and disincentivize people from calling for help. As that brief noted, \u201cWhen every interaction with police or request for help can become an invitation for police to invade the home, the willingness of individuals to seek assistance when it is most needed will suffer.\u201d\n\nBut in its first amicus brief<\/a> before the High Court, the Biden Administration glossed over these concerns and called on the justices to uphold the First Circuit\u2019s ruling. Noting that \u201cthe ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is \u2018reasonableness,\u2019\u201d the Justice Department argued that warrants should not be \u201cpresumptively required when a government official\u2019s action is objectively grounded in a non-investigatory public interest, such as health or safety.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe ultimate question in this case is therefore not whether the respondent officers\u2019 actions fit within some narrow warrant exception,\u201d their brief stated, \u201cbut instead whether those actions were reasonable,\u201d actions the Justice Department felt were \u201cjustified\u201d in Caniglia\u2019s case.\n\nAs a fail-safe, the Justice Department also urged the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling on qualified immunity<\/a> grounds, arguing that the officers\u2019 \u201cactions did not violate any clearly established law so as to render the officers individually liable in a damages action.\u201d\n\nBut the Biden Administration, along with the courts that have extended the community caretaking exception, overlook a key component of the Fourth Amendment: the Security Clause. After all, the Fourth Amendment opens with the phrase, \u201cthe right of the people to be secure.\u201d\n\nIn an amicus brief,<\/a> the Institute for Justice noted that \u201cto the Founding generation, \u2018secure\u2019 did not simply mean the right to be \u2018spared\u2019 an unreasonable search or seizure\u201d but also involved \u201charms attributable to the potential for unreasonable searches and seizures.\u201d Expanding the community caretaking exception to \u201callow warrantless entries into peoples\u2019 homes on a whim,\u201d argued the IJ brief, \u201cinvokes the arbitrary, looming threat of general writs that so incited the Framers\u201d and would undermine \u201cthe right of the people to be secure\u201d in their homes.\n\nThe IJ brief further argued that extending the \u201ccommunity caretaking\u201d exception to the home would \u201cflatly contradict\u201d the Supreme Court’s prior rulings, which \u201chas only discussed community caretaking in the context of vehicle searches and seizures.\u201d In those cases, \u201cthe animating purpose for the exception [was] to allow officers to remove damaged or abandoned vehicles that pose a risk to public safety.\u201d By contrast, the IJ amicus asserted,\u00a0 \u201cthat justification is entirely absent\u201d when it comes to homes.\n\n\u201cThe Fourth Amendment protects our right to be secure in our property, which means the right to be free from fear that the police will enter your house without warning or authorization,\u201d said Institute for Justice Attorney Joshua Windham. \u201cA rule that allows police to burst into your home without a warrant whenever they feel they are acting as \u2018community caretakers\u2019 is a threat to everyone\u2019s security.\u201d\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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