Opinion
No. 337733
10-17-2017
PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. RICKY KEVONIAN, Defendant-Appellant.
UNPUBLISHED Oakland Circuit Court
LC No. 2016-259988-FH Before: GLEICHER, P.J., and FORT HOOD and SWARTZLE, JJ. PER CURIAM.
On May 9, 2016, after observing a large amount of blood in and around defendant's home, an officer entered the home without a warrant. The observations the officer made during this entry became the basis for a search warrant, executed later that day. Based upon evidence obtained during the execution of the search warrant, defendant was charged with committing various drug-related offenses. Defendant moved in limine to suppress the evidence claiming it was the product of an unconstitutional warrantless search. The trial court denied defendant's motion, concluding that the warrantless entry was proper under the emergency-aid exception. We granted defendant's interlocutory appeal of that ruling. We now affirm.
People v Kevonian, unpublished order of the Court of Appeals, entered May 17, 2017 (Docket No. 337733).
I. BACKGROUND
This case arises from a search of defendant's home on May 9, 2016. On this date, Sergeant Brian Pizzuti of the Bloomfield Township Police Department was dispatched for a welfare check to Wye Oak Street, in Bloomfield Hills, around 8:00 a.m. He observed a damaged Toyota 4Runner parked "kinda down in the ditch" in front of a home with no one in the vehicle. There was a female sitting on the front porch of the home where the car was parked. Sergeant Pizzuti attempted to speak to the female, but she was unable to speak clearly, had constricted pupils, and was stumbling—all of which led Sergeant Pizzuti to believe that the female was under the influence of some substance. The only thing that she could tell Sergeant Pizzuti was that her name was Caitlin. Sergeant Pizzuti observed blood from a cut on Caitlin's hand, but could not tell if she was otherwise injured.
Defendant asserts that this female's name is properly spelled "Katelyn." We will refer to this person as "Caitlin," consistent with the evidentiary hearing transcript.
Sergeant Pizzuti ran the registration for the license plate on the Toyota 4Runner and it was registered to defendant's address, where Caitlin's driver's license was also registered. Defendant's address was only 1½ miles away from where Sergeant Pizzuti found Caitlin. Sergeant Pizzuti had Caitlin transported to the hospital and decided to follow up at defendant's home because he thought "maybe there was something going on at the address," and he wanted to "make sure that everybody else was safe at the house." In addition, given Caitlin's "young age," Sergeant Pizzuti wanted to make sure that there was no underage drinking or illegal substance use at that address.
Caitlin's actual age at the time of the incident is not apparent from the record. --------
When Sergeant Pizzuti arrived at defendant's home, there were multiple cars parked in the driveway. When he approached the home, he observed blood on the front door handle, blood on the ground, blood on the glass of a sun-room window, and blood on a ladder leaning up against the sun-room window. Through a window next to the front door, Sergeant Pizzuti observed broken glass on the floor inside the home and blood on the wall. There was also blood on boxes inside the entranceway and blood on the passenger side window of a car parked near the front door. Sergeant Pizzuti knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. Backup officers that were present knocked on the back doors of the home, and there was no answer. The other officers said the home was secure, and that they could not see anyone else inside the home. At that point, Sergeant Pizzuti "didn't know if there was anybody else in the house," but he still called EMS and the fire department to have them "stage" nearby due to the blood he saw outside and inside the home.
Defendant's daughter then arrived at the home. Defendant's daughter told Sergeant Pizzuti that defendant may be in the house and that she did not know where else he could be. Defendant's daughter opened a window of the sun room from the outside to enter the house, and Sergeant Pizzuti followed her inside. Once inside, Sergeant Pizzuti observed more broken glass, broken picture frames, and more blood in the hallway. Eventually, Sergeant Pizzuti located defendant in bed, naked, unconscious, struggling to breathe, with drug paraphernalia nearby. Defendant was transported to the hospital, and officers later obtained a search warrant for the home based upon Sergeant Pizzuti's observations during the initial entry. Defendant was later charged with committing several drug offenses.
Defendant moved in limine to prevent the prosecution from presenting evidence obtained during either entry, arguing that the initial entry into defendant's home was unconstitutional and therefore could not support the search warrant. The trial court denied defendant's motion. The trial court made a preliminary factual finding that there was "blood everywhere" on the night of the initial entry, and concluded that the initial entry into defendant's home was justified, absent a search warrant, "under the community caretaker/emergency aid exception."
II. ANALYSIS
On appeal, defendant argues that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated because the warrantless entry into his home did not fall under the community-caretaking or emergency-aid exceptions to the search-warrant requirement, and therefore, the trial court erred when it denied defendant's motion to suppress the evidence acquired pursuant to the search warrant. We review the trial court's ruling at a suppression hearing de novo. People v Galloway, 259 Mich App 634, 638; 675 NW2d 883 (2003). Nonetheless, we review the trial court's findings of fact underlying that ruling for clear error. Id. "A finding is clearly erroneous if, after reviewing the entire record, an appellate court is left with a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been made." Id.
The United States Constitution and the Michigan Constitution guarantee the right against unreasonable searches and seizures. US Const, Am IV; Const 1963, art 1, § 11. The reasonableness of a search and seizure depends upon the specific facts and circumstances of the case. People v Jordan, 187 Mich App 582, 586; 468 NW2d 294 (1991). Police officers generally must obtain a warrant before conducting a search, People v Levine, 461 Mich 172, 178; 600 NW2d 622 (1999), and "a search conducted without a warrant is unreasonable unless there exists . . . exigent circumstances establishing an exception to the warrant requirement," Jordan, 187 Mich App at 586. The burden is on the prosecution to demonstrate that a search and seizure challenged by a defendant was justified by an exception to the warrant requirement. Galloway, 259 Mich App at 638.
The Emergency-Aid Exception Controls. The trial court found that the warrantless entry in this case was justified under both the community-caretaking and emergency-aid exceptions to the warrant requirement. Despite the trial court's characterization, though the community-caretaking and emergency-aid exceptions are similar, they are indeed distinct exceptions judged upon different standards. See People v Davis, 442 Mich 1, 24-25; 497 NW2d 910 (1993).
The community-caretaking exception applies in situations where police are not investigating possible criminal activity, such as impounding and inventorying a vehicle or performing a welfare check. See id. at 23-24. Although helping a person in distress may be classified as one of the caretaking functions of the police department, id. at 23, this Court has held that when police officers enter a dwelling based upon a belief that the person inside requires emergency attention, "their actions should be governed by the emergency aid doctrine, regardless of whether these actions can also be classified as community caretaking activities," id. at 25. This distinction is especially important when officers provide emergency attention to a person within the context of a criminal investigation. Id. at 22.
In this case, Sergeant Pizzuti decided to visit defendant's property upon his dual suspicions that criminal underage substance use may be occurring there and that someone at the property would need emergency attention. After viewing several smears of blood in and around the home, Sergeant Pizzuti entered the home to see if there was anyone inside that required emergency aid. Accordingly, the circumstances of this case must be analyzed under the emergency-aid exception, rather than the community-caretaking exception.
"The emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement allows police officers to enter a dwelling without a warrant under circumstances in which they reasonably believe, based on specific, articulable facts, that some person within is in need of immediate aid." People v Lemons, 299 Mich App 541, 545-546; 830 NW2d 794 (2013) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The reasonableness of the warrantless entry does not depend on how serious the crime being investigated is, and "ironclad proof of a likely serious, life-threatening injury" is not required to invoke the exception. Id. at 549 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The police do not need to possess probable cause that a person is in need of immediate aid before entering a dwelling, but rather, must possess "a reasonable belief that such circumstances exist." Davis, 442 Mich at 20. Once inside the dwelling, "the officer may not do more than is reasonably necessary to determine whether a person is in need of assistance, and to provide that assistance." Id. at 26
The Officer's Entry Was Justified Under the Emergency-Aid Exception. As the trial court hinted at in its ruling, this case is a classic example of the emergency-aid exception. A short distance from defendant's home, Sergeant Pizzuti witnessed what appeared to be a car crash involving one of the residents of defendant's home. The resident was clearly under the influence of some substance and was unable to provide any useful information. Nonetheless, Sergeant Pizzuti was able to identify the woman's residence and, after observing blood on her hands, decided to investigate what exactly was occurring there. After hearing testimony and seeing pictures of the scene, the trial court found that there was "blood everywhere" at defendant's home. Despite defendant's daughter informing officers that defendant was likely home, and despite the presence of several cars on the property, the officers could not observe anyone moving around inside the home. Given the amount of blood everywhere, the damage to defendant's home, and the number of vehicles but the absence of anyone moving around, an objectively reasonable officer would have concluded that someone inside the home likely required emergency attention. Accordingly, Sergeant Pizzuti's warrantless entry was justified under the emergency-aid exception.
On appeal, defendant attacks this reasoning with multiple arguments, none of which are persuasive. First, defendant argues that Sergeant Pizzuti did not enter defendant's home to administer emergency aid, but rather, to investigate possible criminal drug activity there. This argument fails for several reasons. In the first instance, Sergeant Pizzuti's subjective motivation for entering defendant's home is irrelevant to the application of the emergency-aid exception. "An action is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of the individual officer's state of mind, as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justified the action." Brigham City v Stuart, 547 US 398, 404; 126 S Ct 1943; 164 L Ed 2d 650 (2006) (internal quotation notation and citation omitted). "The police officer's subjective motivation is irrelevant." Id. Moreover, even were Sergeant Pizzuti's subjective state of mind relevant, the record indicates that Sergeant Pizzuti did subjectively believe that emergency aid would likely be necessary. Had Sergeant Pizzuti not believed that persons in the home would require emergency attention, he would likely not have called for emergency medical and fire personnel to stage nearby the scene. Indeed, it is entirely plausible that Sergeant Pizzuti's quick thinking prevented defendant's death or serious injury.
Similarly, defendant argues that, because Sergeant Pizzuti visited defendant's property upon his suspicion that criminal activity may be occurring there, the emergency-aid exception does not apply. Nonetheless, one of the primary functions of the emergency-aid exception is to allow a police officer to enter a home to administer emergency aid to a person discovered as part of the officer's investigation of possible criminal activity. See Slaughter, 489 Mich at 311. Indeed, in many cases, emergency aid may be necessitated by criminal activity. Here, the presence of blood in and around defendant's home was objectively consistent with a violent attack or a serious accident. Had an attacker, for example, actually been in defendant's home, no one would have expected Sergeant Pizzuti to stand pat outside the door while the attacker was present or to forgo rendering aid to his victims while waiting for a search warrant. Rather, the objectively reasonable course of action in such a situation would be for Sergeant Pizzuti to enter the home, prevent any further attack or mitigate any ongoing accident, and render aid to any victims.
Defendant also argues that the circumstances faced by Sergeant Pizzuti objectively indicated that the blood present at defendant's home was from Caitlin, rather than another source. Thus, defendant argues that, because Caitlin had already been transported to the hospital, Sergeant Pizzuti could not have reasonably thought that another person was in need of emergency attention. Yet, even on appeal, the record is insufficient to conclude that the blood was indeed Caitlin's. The trial court made a factual finding that there was "blood everywhere" and, having reviewed the record, we are not left with a definite and firm conviction that the trial court's finding was a mistake. Even had the blood turned out to be Caitlin's, at the time of his entry, Sergeant Pizzuti would have had no way of determining whether the blood at defendant's home was actually Caitlin's. The fact remains that the blood, property damage, and general disorder Sergeant Pizzuti observed at defendant's home was objectively consistent with a number of possible emergency situations. Sergeant Pizzuti reasonably entered defendant's home and actually responded to an emergency.
Finally, despite defendant's argument that these circumstances are not the type of situation in which this Court has found the emergency-aid exception applicable, it is clear to us that this Court has applied the emergency-aid exception under less dire circumstances than those in this case. For example, in Lemons, 299 Mich App at 543, police were dispatched to the defendant's condominium because of a report that a front door was open. When the police arrived, the door was open, but there was no damage, and no one answered the doorbell. Id. This Court upheld the officer's entry into the home on the reasonable suspicion that there may have been a home invasion. Id. at 543-544, 547. Similar to Lemons, Sergeant Pizzuti observed no one in the residence. Yet, unlike Lemons, where the officer's suspicion was based only upon an open door, Sergeant Pizzuti's suspicion was based upon his previous encounter with one of the home's inhabitants, extensive property damage, and "blood everywhere" at defendant's home. Again, these circumstances are all objectively consistent with a number of emergency situations, including, as in Lemons, a possible intruder in defendant's home.
Accordingly, the trial court properly concluded that Sergeant Pizzuti's warrantless entry into defendant's home was justified under the emergency-aid exception to the warrant requirement. Therefore, we conclude that the trial court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress the evidence obtained as a result of this entry. We note that, even had the emergency-aid exception been technically inapplicable to these circumstances, suppression still would not be warranted. Exclusion of improperly obtained evidence is intended to deter police misconduct, People v Hyde, 285 Mich App 428, 439; 775 NW2d 833 (2009), and an officer's good-faith belief that emergency aid necessitated a warrantless entry renders exclusion an inappropriate remedy, People v Hill, 299 Mich App 402, 411; Lemons, 299 Mich App at 549. Because the record indicates that Sergeant Pizzuti entered defendant's home upon a good-faith belief that emergency aid may have been necessary, we conclude that, even had the emergency-aid exception not applied, the trial court still would have properly denied defendant's motion.
Affirmed.
/s/ Elizabeth L. Gleicher
/s/ Karen M. Fort Hood
/s/ Brock A. Swartzle