When can police enter your home without a warrant?

The U.S. Constitution guarantees the right against “unreasonable searches and seizure.” This means that usually police need a search warrant in order to enter your home. Sometimes, though, a search can be reasonable — and therefore constitutional — even without a warrant. This article addresses some of the situations in which police can legally enter and search your home without a warrant.

What is a warrant

A warrant is a document issued by a judge that basically certifies the police have “probable cause” to believe a crime was committed and certain evidence of the crime exists. Probable cause is a very low standard; it basically just asks, “Would a reasonable person believe the evidence or suspect is in your home?”

The police prepare a document called an “affidavit” outlining the justification for the search and establishing probable cause, and a judge or magistrate issues the warrant. Once the warrant has been issued, the search is considered reasonable, and therefore valid under the Constitution.

Sometimes, though, police do not have time to obtain a warrant before conducting a search. In these limited situations, the court still considers the search “reasonable” — and therefore constitutional — even without a warrant.

These permissible, warrantless searches mostly fall into three categories: pursuit of a suspect, risk that evidence will be destroyed, or threat to public safety.

1. The hot pursuit doctrine

Police can enter a home without a warrant if they are in “hot pursuit” of a suspected felon and have probable cause to believe the person is in your house. They can enter your home to look for the suspect, but they are limited by time and space. For time, once the suspect is found and arrested, the search must end. In terms of space, the search must be restricted to places where a suspect could be hiding. So police can open closets or look under beds, but they can’t open drawers or cabinets that are clearly too small to contain a suspect.

2. Destruction of evidence

Police can enter a home without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe the evidence is in the process of being destroyed or is about to be destroyed. This is called “imminent” destruction of evidence. This belief can be based on any of the senses. It can include seeing, through a window, a suspect running to the bathroom holding a bag of drugs, hearing a toilet flushing or even smelling burnt marijuana that presumably a suspect would want to dispose of before police enter the home.

3. Public safety

Police can enter a home without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe the public or an individual is being threatened with serious injury. Some states, including California, have extended this exception to animals. For example, police can enter a home without a warrant to break up a dog fight. Some courts have held that meth labs pose an inherent danger to the public because they pose a risk of explosion, and therefore police can always enter a meth lab without a warrant.

4. Consent

Police can also of course come in if you invite them in.

Once police have entered your home without a warrant for one of the valid reasons listed above, something called the plain view doctrine comes into play. Items that are seen in plain view are not considered part of a search and can be seized as evidence.

So for example, if police enter you house because they are chasing a suspect, and they see illegal drugs or weapons sitting on your table, they can seize those items and arrest you for illegal possession. It doesn’t matter whether or not you knew the suspect or had anything to do with the original crime being investigated. The way the court sees it, the police presence in your home was reasonable, your illegal items were in plain view, and you can be held liable for possession of the contraband items.

The exclusionary rule

What happens, though, if the police search goes beyond the limits of time and space that we discussed earlier?

For example, imagine that police enter your home under the hot pursuit doctrine but start opening drawers and looking in places where the suspect couldn’t possibly be hiding. In a drawer they find drugs and arrest you for possession.

This search would be unconstitutional because it was conducted without a warrant and did not conform to the requirements of the hot pursuit exception. Evidence collected during an illegal search cannot be introduced in court; this is called the “exclusionary rule.” So you might be arrested, but the evidence would not be admissible in court, and the prosecution would have an extremely weak case.

This is why lawyers say that if you are arrested, you should exercise your right to remain silent and refuse to speak without a lawyer present.

If it turns out later that the drugs cannot be introduced in court and you have kept quiet — i.e. not made any incriminating statements against yourself or someone else — you will be in a much stronger position later.

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NOTE: This information is intended to provide general knowledge only and should not be considered legal advice. Please upvote if you found it useful, and if you have any questions — or if there is a particular topic you would like to see covered — let me know in the comments!

Coming next: When can police search your person without a warrant?