(Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2005 1
Syllabus
NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
BRIGHAM CITY, UTAH v. STUART ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF UTAH
No. 05–502. Argued April 24, 2006—Decided May 22, 2006
Responding to a 3 a.m. call about a loud party, police arrived at the
house in question, heard shouting inside, proceeded down the drive
way, and saw two juveniles drinking beer in the backyard. Entering
the yard, they saw through a screen door and windows an altercation
in the kitchen between four adults and a juvenile, who punched one
of the adults, causing him to spit blood in a sink. An officer opened
the screen door and announced the officers’ presence. Unnoticed
amid the tumult, the officer entered the kitchen and again cried out,
whereupon the altercation gradually subsided. The officers arrested
respondents and charged them with contributing to the delinquency
of a minor and related offenses. The trial court granted their motion
to suppress all evidence obtained after the officers entered the home
on the ground that the warrantless entry violated the Fourth
Amendment, and the Utah Court of Appeals affirmed. Affirming, the
State Supreme Court held that the injury caused by the juvenile’s
punch was insufficient to trigger the “emergency aid doctrine” be
cause it did not give rise to an objectively reasonable belief that an
unconscious, semiconscious, or missing person feared injured or dead
was in the home. Furthermore, the court suggested the doctrine was
inapplicable because the officers had not sought to assist the injured
adult but had acted exclusively in a law enforcement capacity. The
court also held that the entry did not fall within the exigent circum
stances exception to the warrant requirement.
Held: Police may enter a home without a warrant when they have an
objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seri
ously injured or imminently threatened with such injury.
Because the Fourth Amendment’s ultimate touchstone is “reason
ableness,” the warrant requirement is subject to certain exceptions.
For example, one exigency obviating the requirement is the need to
2 BRIGHAM CITY v. STUART
Syllabus
render emergency assistance to occupants of private property who are
seriously injured or threatened with such injury. Mincey v. Arizona,
437 U. S. 385, 392. This Court has repeatedly rejected respondents’
contention that, in assessing the reasonableness of an entry, consid
eration should be given to the subjective motivations of individual of
ficers. Because the officers’ subjective motivation is irrelevant, Bond
v. United States, 529 U. S. 334, 338, n. 2, it does not matter here
whether they entered the kitchen to arrest respondents and gather
evidence or to assist the injured and prevent further violence. Indi
anapolis v. Edmond, 531 U. S. 32, 46, and Florida v. Wells, 495 U. S.
1, 4, distinguished. Relying on this Court’s holding in Welsh v. Wis
consin, 466 U. S. 740, 753, that “an important factor to be considered
when determining whether any exigency exists is the gravity of the
underlying offense for which the arrest is being made,” respondents
further contend that their conduct was not serious enough to justify
the officers’ intrusion into the home. This contention is misplaced.
In Welsh, the “only potential emergency” confronting the officers was
the need to preserve evidence of the suspect’s blood-alcohol level, an
exigency the Court held insufficient under the circumstances to jus
tify a warrantless entry into the suspect’s home. Ibid. Here, the offi
cers were confronted with ongoing violence occurring within the
home, a situation Welsh did not address.
The officers’ entry here was plainly reasonable under the circum
stances. Given the tumult at the house when they arrived, it was ob
vious that knocking on the front door would have been futile. More
over, in light of the fracas they observed in the kitchen, the officers
had an objectively reasonable basis for believing both that the injured
adult might need help and that the violence was just beginning.
Nothing in the Fourth Amendment required them to wait until an
other blow rendered someone unconscious, semiconscious, or worse
before entering. The manner of their entry was also reasonable, since
nobody heard the first announcement of their presence, and it was
only after the announcing officer stepped into the kitchen and an
nounced himself again that the tumult subsided. That announce
ment was at least equivalent to a knock on the screen door and, un
der the circumstances, there was no violation of the Fourth
Amendment’s knock-and-announce rule. Furthermore, once the an
nouncement was made, the officers were free to enter; it would serve
no purpose to make them stand dumbly at the door awaiting a re
sponse while those within brawled on, oblivious to their presence.
Pp. 3–7.
2005 UT 13, 122 P. 3d 506, reversed and remanded.
ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. STE
VENS, J.,filed a concurring opinion.
Cite as: 547 U. S. ____ (2006) 1
Opinion of the Court
NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the
preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to
notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash
ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order
that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 05–502
_________________
BRIGHAM CITY, UTAH, PETITIONER v. CHARLES W.
STUART ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF UTAH
[May 22, 2006]
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the
Court.
In this case we consider whether police may enter a
home without a warrant when they have an objectively
reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously
injured or imminently threatened with such injury. We
conclude that they may.
I
This case arises out of a melee that occurred in a Brig-
ham City, Utah, home in the early morning hours of July
23, 2000. At about 3 a.m., four police officers responded to
a call regarding a loud party at a residence. Upon arriving
at the house, they heard shouting from inside, and pro
ceeded down the driveway to investigate. There, they
observed two juveniles drinking beer in the backyard.
They entered the backyard, and saw—through a screen
door and windows—an altercation taking place in the
kitchen of the home. According to the testimony of one of
the officers, four adults were attempting, with some diffi
culty, to restrain a juvenile. The juvenile eventually
“broke free, swung a fist and struck one of the adults in
the face.” 2005 UT 13, ¶2, 122 P. 3d 506, 508. The officer
2 BRIGHAM CITY v. STUART
Opinion of the Court
testified that he observed the victim of the blow spitting
blood into a nearby sink. App. 40. The other adults con
tinued to try to restrain the juvenile, pressing him up
against a refrigerator with such force that the refrigerator
began moving across the floor. At this point, an officer
opened the screen door and announced the officers’ pres
ence. Amid the tumult, nobody noticed. The officer en
tered the kitchen and again cried out, and as the occu
pants slowly became aware that the police were on the
scene, the altercation ceased.
The officers subsequently arrested respondents and
charged them with contributing to the delinquency of a
minor, disorderly conduct, and intoxication. In the trial
court, respondents filed a motion to suppress all evidence
obtained after the officers entered the home, arguing that
the warrantless entry violated the Fourth Amendment.
The court granted the motion, and the Utah Court of
Appeals affirmed.
Before the Supreme Court of Utah, Brigham City ar
gued that although the officers lacked a warrant, their
entry was nevertheless reasonable on either of two
grounds. The court rejected both contentions and, over
two dissenters, affirmed. First, the court held that the
injury caused by the juvenile’s punch was insufficient to
trigger the so-called “emergency aid doctrine” because it
did not give rise to an “ objectively reasonable belief that
an unconscious, semi-conscious, or missing person feared
injured or dead [was] in the home.” 122 P. 3d, at 513
(internal quotation marks omitted). Furthermore, the
court suggested that the doctrine was inapplicable because
the officers had not sought to assist the injured adult, but
instead had acted “exclusively in their law enforcement
capacity.” Ibid.
The court also held that the entry did not fall within the
exigent circumstances exception to the warrant require
ment. This exception applies, the court explained, where
Cite as: 547 U. S. ____ (2006) 3
Opinion of the Court
police have probable cause and where “a reasonable per
son [would] believe that the entry was necessary to pre
vent physical harm to the officers or other persons.” Id.,
at 514 (internal quotation marks omitted). Under this
standard, the court stated, the potential harm need not be
as serious as that required to invoke the emergency aid
exception. Although it found the case “a close and difficult
call,” the court nevertheless concluded that the officers’
entry was not justified by exigent circumstances. Id., at
515.
We granted certiorari, 546 U. S. ___ (2006), in light of
differences among state courts and the Courts of Appeals
concerning the appropriate Fourth Amendment standard
governing warrantless entry by law enforcement in an
emergency situation. Compare In re Sealed Case 96–3167,
153 F. 3d 759, 766 (CADC 1998) (“[T]he standard for
exigent circumstances is an objective one”) and People v.
Hebert, 46 P. 3d 473, 480 (Colo. 2002) (en banc) (consider
ing the circumstances as they “would have been objec
tively examined by a prudent and trained police officer”),
with United States v. Cervantes, 219 F. 3d 882, 890 (CA9
2000) (“[U]nder the emergency doctrine, ‘[a] search must
not be primarily motivated by intent to arrest and seize
evidence’ ” (quoting People v. Mitchell, 39 N. Y. 2d 173,
177, 347 N. E. 2d 607, 609 (1976)) and State v. Mountford,
171 Vt. 487, 492, 769 A. 2d 639, 645 (2000) (Mitchell test
“requir[es] courts to find that the primary subjective moti
vation behind such searches was to provide emergency
aid”).
II
It is a “ ‘ basic principle of Fourth Amendment law that
searches and seizures inside a home without a warrant
are presumptively unreasonable.’ ” Groh v. Ramirez, 540
U. S. 551, 559 (2004) (quoting Payton v. New York, 445 U. S.
573, 586 (1980) (some internal quotation marks omitted)).
4 BRIGHAM CITY v. STUART
Opinion of the Court
Nevertheless, because the ultimate touchstone of the
Fourth Amendment is “reasonableness,” the warrant
requirement is subject to certain exceptions. Flippo v.
West Virginia, 528 U. S. 11, 13 (1999) (per curiam); Katz v.
United States, 389 U. S. 347, 357 (1967). We have held, for
example, that law enforcement officers may make a war
rantless entry onto private property to fight a fire and
investigate its cause, Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U. S. 499, 509
(1978), to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence,
Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 40 (1963), or to engage in
“hot pursuit” of a fleeing suspect, United States v. Santana,
427 U. S. 38, 42–43 (1976). “[W]arrants are generally re
quired to search a person’s home or his person unless ‘the
exigencies of the situation’ make the needs of law enforce
ment so compelling that the warrantless search is objec
tively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.” Mincey v.
Arizona, 437 U. S. 385, 393–394 (1978).
One exigency obviating the requirement of a warrant is
the need to assist persons who are seriously injured or
threatened with such injury. “ ‘The need to protect or
preserve life or avoid serious injury is justification for
what would be otherwise illegal absent an exigency or
emergency.’ ” Id., at 392 (quoting Wayne v. United States,
318 F. 2d 205, 212 (CADC 1963) (Burger, J.)); see also
Tyler, supra, at 509. Accordingly, law 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. Mincey, supra, at 392; see also
Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U. S. ___, ___ (2006) (slip op., at
13–14) (“[I]t would be silly to suggest that the police would
commit a tort by entering . . . to determine whether vio
lence (or threat of violence) has just occurred or is about to
(or soon will) occur”).
Respondents do not take issue with these principles, but
instead advance two reasons why the officers’ entry here
was unreasonable. First, they argue that the officers were
Cite as: 547 U. S. ____ (2006) 5
Opinion of the Court
more interested in making arrests than quelling violence.
They urge us to consider, in assessing the reasonableness
of the entry, whether the officers were “indeed motivated
primarily by a desire to save lives and property.” Brief for
Respondents 3; see also Brief for National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae 6 (entry to
render emergency assistance justifies a search “only when
the searching officer is acting outside his traditional law-
enforcement capacity”). The Utah Supreme Court also
considered the officers’ subjective motivations relevant.
See 122 P. 3d, at 513 (search under the “emergency aid
doctrine” may not be “primarily motivated by intent to
arrest and seize evidence” (internal quotation marks
omitted)).
Our cases have repeatedly rejected this approach. An
action is “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment,
regardless of the individual officer’s state of mind, “as long
as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify [the]
action.” Scott v. United States, 436 U. S. 128, 138 (1978)
(emphasis added). The officer’s subjective motivation is
irrelevant. See Bond v. United States, 529 U. S. 334, 338,
n. 2 (2000) (“The parties properly agree that the subjective
intent of the law enforcement officer is irrelevant in deter
mining whether that officer’s actions violate the Fourth
Amendment . . . ; the issue is not his state of mind, but the
objective effect of his actions”); Whren v. United States, 517
U. S. 806, 813 (1996) (“[W]e have been unwilling to enter
tain Fourth Amendment challenges based on the actual
motivations of individual officers”); Graham v. Connor, 490
U. S. 386, 397 (1989) (“[O]ur prior cases make clear” that
“the subjective motivations of the individual officers . . .
ha[ve] no bearing on whether a particular seizure is ‘unrea
sonable’ under the Fourth Amendment”). It therefore does
not matter here—even if their subjective motives could be
so neatly unraveled—whether the officers entered the
kitchen to arrest respondents and gather evidence against
6 BRIGHAM CITY v. STUART
Opinion of the Court
them or to assist the injured and prevent further violence.
As respondents note, we have held in the context of
programmatic searches conducted without individualized
suspicion—such as checkpoints to combat drunk driving or
drug trafficking—that “an inquiry into programmatic
purpose” is sometimes appropriate. Indianapolis v. Ed
mond, 531 U. S. 32, 46 (2000) (emphasis added); see also
Florida v. Wells, 495 U. S. 1, 4 (1990) (an inventory search
must be regulated by “standardized criteria” or “established
routine” so as not to “be a ruse for a general rummaging in
order to discover incriminating evidence”). But this inquiry
is directed at ensuring that the purpose behind the pro
gram is not “ultimately indistinguishable from the general
interest in crime control.” Edmond, 531 U. S., at 44. It
has nothing to do with discerning what is in the mind of
the individual officer conducting the search. Id., at 48.
Respondents further contend that their conduct was not
serious enough to justify the officers’ intrusion into the
home. They rely on Welsh v. Wisconsin, 466 U. S. 740, 753
(1984), in which we held that “an important factor to be
considered when determining whether any exigency exists
is the gravity of the underlying offense for which the
arrest is being made.” This contention, too, is misplaced.
Welsh involved a warrantless entry by officers to arrest a
suspect for driving while intoxicated. There, the “only
potential emergency” confronting the officers was the need
to preserve evidence (i.e., the suspect’s blood-alcohol
level)—an exigency that we held insufficient under the
circumstances to justify entry into the suspect’s home.
Ibid. Here, the officers were confronted with ongoing
violence occurring within the home. Welsh did not address
such a situation.
We think the officers’ entry here was plainly reasonable
under the circumstances. The officers were responding, at
3 o’clock in the morning, to complaints about a loud party.
As they approached the house, they could hear from
Cite as: 547 U. S. ____ (2006) 7
Opinion of the Court
within “an altercation occurring, some kind of a fight.”
App. 29. “It was loud and it was tumultuous.” Id., at 33.
The officers heard “thumping and crashing” and people
yelling “stop, stop” and “get off me.” Id., at 28, 29. As the
trial court found, “it was obvious that . . . knocking on the
front door” would have been futile. Id., at 92. The noise
seemed to be coming from the back of the house; after
looking in the front window and seeing nothing, the offi
cers proceeded around back to investigate further. They
found two juveniles drinking beer in the backyard. From
there, they could see that a fracas was taking place inside
the kitchen. A juvenile, fists clenched, was being held
back by several adults. As the officers watch, he breaks
free and strikes one of the adults in the face, sending the
adult to the sink spitting blood.
In these circumstances, the officers had an objectively
reasonable basis for believing both that the injured adult
might need help and that the violence in the kitchen was
just beginning. Nothing in the Fourth Amendment re
quired them to wait until another blow rendered someone
“unconscious” or “semi-conscious” or worse before enter
ing. The role of a peace officer includes preventing vio
lence and restoring order, not simply rendering first aid to
casualties; an officer is not like a boxing (or hockey) refe
ree, poised to stop a bout only if it becomes too one-sided.
The manner of the officers’ entry was also reasonable.
After witnessing the punch, one of the officers opened the
screen door and “yelled in police.” Id., at 40. When no
body heard him, he stepped into the kitchen and an
nounced himself again. Only then did the tumult subside.
The officer’s announcement of his presence was at least
equivalent to a knock on the screen door. Indeed, it was
probably the only option that had even a chance of rising
above the din. Under these circumstances, there was no
violation of the Fourth Amendment’s knock-and-announce
rule. Furthermore, once the announcement was made, the
8 BRIGHAM CITY v. STUART
Opinion of the Court
officers were free to enter; it would serve no purpose to
require them to stand dumbly at the door awaiting a
response while those within brawled on, oblivious to their
presence.
Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Supreme
Court of Utah, and remand the case for further proceed
ings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Cite as: 547 U. S. ____ (2006) 1
STEVENS, J., concurring
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
No. 05–502
_________________
BRIGHAM CITY, UTAH, PETITIONER v. CHARLES W.
STUART ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF UTAH
[May 22, 2006]
JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring.
This is an odd flyspeck of a case. The charges that have
been pending against respondents for the past six years
are minor offenses—intoxication, contributing to the de
linquency of a minor, and disorderly conduct—two of
which could have been proved by evidence that was gath
ered by the responding officers before they entered the
home. The maximum punishment for these crimes ranges
between 90 days and 6 months in jail. And the Court’s
unanimous opinion restating well-settled rules of federal
law is so clearly persuasive that it is hard to imagine the
outcome was ever in doubt.
Under these circumstances, the only difficult question is
which of the following is the most peculiar: (1) that the
Utah trial judge, the intermediate state appellate court,
and the Utah Supreme Court all found a Fourth Amend
ment violation on these facts; (2) that the prosecution
chose to pursue this matter all the way to the United
States Supreme Court; or (3) that this Court voted to
grant the petition for a writ of certiorari.
A possible explanation for the first is that the suppres
sion ruling was correct as a matter of Utah law, and nei
ther trial counsel nor the trial judge bothered to identify
the Utah Constitution as an independent basis for the
decision because they did not expect the prosecution to
2 BRIGHAM CITY v. STUART
STEVENS, J., concurring
appeal.* The most plausible explanation for the latter two
decisions is that they were made so police officers in Utah
may enter a home without a warrant when they see ongo
ing violence—we are, of course, reversing the Utah Su
preme Court’s conclusion to the contrary. But that pur
pose, laudable though it may be, cannot be achieved in
this case. Our holding today addresses only the limita
tions placed by the Federal Constitution on the search at
issue; we have no authority to decide whether the police in
this case violated the Utah Constitution.
The Utah Supreme Court, however, has made clear that
the Utah Constitution provides greater protection to the
privacy of the home than does the Fourth Amendment.
See State v. Debooy, 2000 UT 32, ¶12, 996 P. 2d 546, 549.
And it complained in this case of respondents’ failure to
raise or adequately brief a state constitutional challenge,
thus preventing the state courts from deciding the case on
anything other than Fourth Amendment grounds. See
2005 UT 13, ¶12, 122 P. 3d 506, 510. “[S]urpris[ed]” by
“[t]he reluctance of litigants to take up and develop a state
constitutional analysis,” ibid., the court expressly invited
future litigants to bring challenges under the Utah Consti
tution to enable it to fulfill its “responsibility as guardians
of the individual liberty of our citizens” and “undertak[e] a
principled exploration of the interplay between federal and
state protections of individual rights,” id., at 511. The fact
that this admonishment and request came from the Utah
Supreme Court in this very case not only demonstrates
that the prosecution selected the wrong case for establish
ing the rule it wants, but indicates that the Utah Supreme
Court would probably adopt the same rule as a matter of
state constitutional law that we reject today under the
——————
* Indeed, it was the prosecution that prepared the trial court’s order
granting respondents’ motion to suppress. See 2002 UT App. 317, ¶4,
57 P. 3d 1111, 1112.
Cite as: 547 U. S. ____ (2006) 3
STEVENS, J., concurring
Federal Constitution.
Whether or not that forecast is accurate, I can see no
reason for this Court to cause the Utah courts to redecide
the question as a matter of state law. Federal interests
are not offended when a single State elects to provide
greater protection for its citizens than the Federal Consti
tution requires. Indeed, I continue to believe “that a policy
of judicial restraint—one that allows other decisional
bodies to have the last word in legal interpretation until it
is truly necessary for this Court to intervene—enables this
Court to make its most effective contribution to our federal
system of government.” Michigan v. Long, 463 U. S. 1032,
1067 (1983) (STEVENS, J., dissenting). Thus, while I join the
Court’s opinion, I remain persuaded that my vote to deny
the State’s petition for certiorari was correct.