Opinion
CUMCD-CR-2021-04648
01-08-2024
STATE OF MAINE, Plaintiff v. BRANDON LIBBY, Defendant
MOTION TO SUPPRESS PURSUANT TO M.R.CRIM.P. 41A
The police entered 35 Dow Street, the home of Brandon Libby in Standish and Entered the home without a warrant. Maine recognizes that warrantless searches are unreasonable unless an exception to the warrant requirement exists:
Our Court has recognized an additional exception to the warrant requirements in situations where exigent circumstances exist See State v. Dunlap, 395 A.2d 821, 824 (Me. 1978). But, before reaching the issue of the existence vel non of exigent circumstances underlying the dispensation with the warrant requirement in police intrusions upon private property, such as in this case the undertaking by a law enforcement officer of forceful entry into a private dwelling-house, the officer must have knowledge of facts supporting a proper determination of probable cause. Indeed, it is the coexistence of probable cause and exigent circumstances that will justify the warrantless entry of a home and a subsequent search or arrest therein. See State v. Barclay, 398 A.2d 794, 796-97 (Me. 1979); State v. Libby, 453 A.2d 481,484 (Me. 1982). The issue of whether exigent circumstances exist excusing the procurement of a search warrant becomes relevant only if there has been a threshold finding that there was probable cause for the entry and search. State v. Sweatt, 427 A.2d 940, 950 (Me. 1981). Hence, in the instant case, the burden is on the State to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Officer Gagnon's forceful entry into the Boilard home in search of the children for investigative purposes was made with probable cause that a crime had been committed and that the circumstances were such that it was impracticable for the officer to postpone his entry and search until he obtained a warrant to do so. The
burden is on the State to prove the underlying facts bringing the case within one of the exceptions to the warrant requirement. State v. Philbrick, 436 A,2d 844, 854 (Me.1981); State v. Dunlap, 395 A.2d 821, 824 (Me.1978); State v. Heald, 314A.2d 820, 829 (Me. 1973).State v. Boilard 488 A.2d 1380, 1384 (1985). Here the police lacked probable cause that a crime had been committed at the time of the initial entry into 35 Dow Street. At most, the police had information that there was a body inside the home. The only possible exception here is the emergency aid doctrine.
Maine also recognizes the emergency aid doctrine as an exception to the warrant requirement. The emergency aid doctrine requires an objectively reasonable basis that someone is in need of aid and not that a body may be inside the dwelling:
"[L]aw enforcement officers may enter a home without a warrant to render emergency assistance to an injured occupant or to protect an occupant from imminent injury." Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398, 403, 126 S.Ct. 1943, 164 L.Ed.2d 650 (2006). However, officers cannot rely on the emergency aid doctrine when they are not lawfully within the area where the alleged emergency arises. See King, 563 U.S. at 462-63, 131 S.Ct. 1849. "Th[e] emergency aid exception does not depend on the officers' subjective intent or the seriousness of any crime they are investigating when the emergency arises. It requires only an objectively reasonable basis for believing that a person within the house is in need of immediate aid." Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 47,130 S.Ct. 546, 175 L.Ed.2d 410 (2009) (alterations, citations, and quotation marks omitted).tate v. Akers, 2021 ME 43 [f 36. In this case, the police collectively had knowledge that Mr.
Libby was distraught, there had been an altercation, and that Amanda was shot. According to Deputy Smith, who responded to 35 Dow Street, dispatch indicated there was a dead body. The information known to police at the time of entry was not enough for purposes of the emergency aid doctrine.
The Law Court has recently defined the circumstances that allow for application of the emergency aid doctrine. A dead body does not qualify for emergency aid doctrine:
The only fact at that time giving rise to the alleged emergency was the sound of a thud-a sound that is generally not unusual coming from inside a residence or other structure, and does not, by itself, suggest the existence of an emergency. The officers did not observe an altercation or injured person inside, and did not describe the sound as any sort of a cry for assistance, See, e.g., Fisher, 558 U.S. at 48, 130 S.Ct. 546; Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 406,126 S.Ct. 1943, We conclude that the officers did not have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that a person inside the camper needed immediate aid, See Fisher, 558 U.S. at 47, 130 S.Ct. 546. Accordingly, the officers' act of lifting the window cover and looking inside was not justified by the emergency aid doctrine and therefore was an unreasonable search under the Fourth Amendment.Id. at ¶ 38. Mr. Libby asserts that the search of his home was unreasonable and that any evidence discovered at 35 Dow Street should be suppressed.