In United States v. Holiday, --- F.3d ---, No. 20-50157 (9th Cir. 2021), the Court affirmed the convictions and 85-year mandatory minimum sentence for 10 robberies.
On appeal, Holiday raised a host of issues, most of which the Court rejected with brief analysis.
The one issue that got considerable attention was Holiday’s claim that the district court erred in failing to suppress body camera footage during an unrelated police encounter at his home in connection with a report of child abuse in a vehicle.
The Government conceded that, when officers opened the front door of the home without permission, this constituted a warrantless search. The government argued, however, that the warrantless search was constitutional under the emergency exception to the warrant requirement.
The Court rejected this argument, holding that the officers’ conduct did not fall within the scope of the emergency exception to the warrant requirement because the officers had no reason to believe that the child victim was in the home at the address where the vehicle was registered.
“The officers had no reason to believe that the child victim was in the home at the address where the [vehicle] was registered. In fact, they had reason to believe the child was not in the home, since the tip they received was that the child was in a [vehicle]. The Government appears to adopt the district court’s finding that “there ‘was no indication that the [incident] in the [vehicle] had ended’” when officers arrived at the residence. If the incident in the [vehicle] had not ended, it was clearly unreasonable for the officers to have believed that the victim of the reported crime was inside Holiday’s residence. In order to show that ‘the search’s scope and manner were reasonable to meet the need,’ the Government must provide a logical and sound link between the information police have and the search they conduct. The Government has failed to do so here.”
Nevertheless, the Court concluded the error in admitting the body camera evidence was harmless and affirmed.
