PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v. No. 10-4234
MELVIN M. TAYLOR,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Virginia, at Richmond.
Richard L. Williams, Senior District Judge.
(3:09-cr-00249-RLW-1)
Argued: September 23, 2010
Decided: November 4, 2010
Before WILKINSON, Circuit Judge, HAMILTON,
Senior Circuit Judge, and Robert J. CONRAD, Jr.,
Chief United States District Judge for the Western District
of North Carolina, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the
opinion, in which Senior Judge Hamilton and Judge Conrad
joined.
2 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
COUNSEL
ARGUED:Paul Geoffrey Gill, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL
PUBLIC DEFENDER, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant.
Richard Daniel Cooke, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES
ATTORNEY, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellee. ON
BRIEF: Michael S. Nachmanoff, Federal Public Defender,
Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellant. Neil H. MacBride,
United States Attorney, Alexandria, Virginia, Michael A.
Jagels, Special Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF
THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Richmond, Virginia,
for Appellee.
OPINION
WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:
This case involves a police officer’s efforts to reunite an
abandoned four-year-old girl with her parents. We agree with
the district court that the officer’s actions were objectively
reasonable and justified by the exigent circumstances stem-
ming from her abandonment. Because the officer discovered
Melvin Taylor and the firearm he was not permitted to pos-
sess in the course of a reasonable and commendable attempt
to locate the child’s parents, guardian, or caretaker, we affirm
the denial of Taylor’s motion to suppress.
I.
On May 1, 2009, Officer Anthony Ratliff of the Richmond
Police Department responded to a late-morning radio call
regarding a four-year-old girl who was wandering along a
busy street and whose parents could not be found. When
Ratliff arrived at the girl’s reported location, a cab driver
waved him over to a parking lot. The girl was sitting in the
back seat of the cab.
UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 3
The cab driver had found the little girl walking up and
down the street alone. After he stopped his cab, he asked her
where she lived, and the girl pointed out a nearby row house
where she proceeded to lead the driver. The unit’s front door
was open so the driver stepped inside to determine whether
anyone was home. When no one responded to his loud query,
he took the girl back to his cab and called the police.
When Ratliff took custody of the girl, she led him to the
same row house that the cab driver pointed out. Ratliff asked
the girl a couple of times whether anyone was home, but she
replied that no one was and added that she was waiting on a
bus to take her to day care. When they arrived at the unit,
Ratliff saw through the exterior door that the interior door was
open.
Ratliff opened the exterior door and yelled "hello." When
no one answered, the girl walked inside and Ratliff followed
her in. He continued to yell "hello" as he walked throughout
the first floor of the house and then up the stairs. As Ratliff
approached the top of the stairs, he finally heard someone say,
"Hey, Boo." Ratliff responded, "Hello, where are you?" and
a male voice replied that he was in the back room.
Ratliff and the girl walked into the room and found the man
who would later be identified as Melvin Taylor. He was lying
on a bed, looking like he had just been woken up. Ratliff
asked Taylor whether he knew the girl, and Taylor replied
that she was his daughter. When Ratliff explained where the
girl had been found, Taylor became angry and said that she
was suspended and was not supposed to catch the bus.
On a cabinet next to the bed, Ratliff noticed a plastic bag
containing .22 caliber bullets. Taylor denied having a gun, but
Ratliff remained understandably wary of leaving the girl with
an angry man who kept a bag of bullets near his bed. Ratliff
then requested identification, which Taylor denied having.
Ratliff also asked Taylor if he knew his social security num-
4 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
ber or the address of the house in which he had been sleeping.
Taylor could provide neither but did give a false
name—Anthony Jackson—and a date of birth. Ratliff then
called for backup to help verify the identity that Taylor had
provided.
When Officer Boxley arrived in response to Ratliff’s
request, Ratliff pointed out the bag of bullets before going to
Boxley’s car to confirm the man’s identity. Despite running
the birth date provided with the name "Anthony Jackson" in
several ways and in several databases, Ratliff found no
matches. He returned to the house and repeatedly asked Tay-
lor if he had any identification, but Taylor continued to deny
that he did. In light of his lack of identification, the bag of
bullets, and Ratliff’s responsibility for the lost four-year-old
girl, Ratliff asked Taylor to get up from the bed so that Ratliff
could perform a protective sweep. The sweep revealed a
handgun hidden under the mattress.
Ratliff did not, at that point, place Taylor under arrest. Due
to the handgun and his lack of identification, however, Ratliff
placed Taylor in handcuffs and had him sit in a chair next to
the bed. Ratliff asked him again for identification and then for
permission to look in the closet and desk for documents with
his name on them, none of which were found. Then, while
using Taylor’s cell phone with his permission, Ratliff
answered an incoming call from someone that caller ID iden-
tified as "baby’s mama." The caller, who was Taylor’s girl-
friend and the four-year-old’s mother, stated that the man’s
name was Orlando Taylor.
Taylor denied that was his name. When Ratliff ran the
name in the police car, however, it eventually led to a photo-
graph that matched the defendant and provided the alias Mel-
vin Taylor. Ratliff also discovered that there were a pair of
arrest warrants on file for Taylor. The officer verified that the
warrants were valid and found that Taylor had felony convic-
tions which made it illegal for him to possess the firearm.
UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 5
Taylor’s girlfriend arrived at the house while Ratliff was veri-
fying Taylor’s identity. After Ratliff read Taylor his Miranda
rights, placed him under arrest, and verified that the woman
was the girl’s mother, Ratliff left the child with her.
On July 21, 2009, Taylor was charged as a felon in posses-
sion of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) in the
Eastern District of Virginia. He moved to suppress the gun
and statements made at the time of arrest as the fruits of a
warrantless search. The district court denied Taylor’s motion
on October 14, 2009, concluding that Ratliff’s conduct was
justified by exigent circumstances and the community care-
taking doctrine. Shortly thereafter, Taylor pled guilty but
reserved his right to appeal the suppression ruling. The district
court sentenced Taylor to 46 months’ imprisonment, and Tay-
lor timely appealed.
II.
Taylor’s initial contention is that Officer Ratliff should
have obtained a warrant before entering the house. This claim
attempts to locate the officer’s conduct within the rubric of
the criminal justice system—a system in which police gener-
ally search for evidence of a crime after the fact. The life-
blood of this constitutional framework is the probable cause
standard, and it is this standard that Taylor repeatedly asserts
the officer should have met. See Brief of Appellant at 11, 16;
Appellant’s Reply Brief at 2-3.
Where police behavior falls outside the criminal justice
rubric, however, warrants and the probable cause standard are
inapposite. "[A] warrant is not required to establish the rea-
sonableness of all government searches; and when a warrant
is not required (and the Warrant Clause therefore not applica-
ble), probable cause is not invariably required either."
Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 653 (1995).
In these situations, warrants based on probable cause would
be an odd fit because "‘[t]he standard of probable cause is
6 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
peculiarly related to criminal investigations.’" United States v.
Johnson, 410 F.3d 137, 144 (4th Cir. 2005) (quoting South
Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 370 n.5 (1976)).
This case involved no criminal investigation. Officer Ratliff
never received a report of a crime, nor did he have reason to
suspect that a crime had taken or would take place. Far from
seeking to arrest anyone, the officer merely worked to return
a lost child to her caretaker. In practical terms, a warrant
would make no sense here. The questions appropriate to a
warrant application—probable cause of what crime? search of
what premises? seizure of what items?—simply have no
application in this case because the officer was responding to
a noncriminal emergency. Taylor’s insistence on a warrant
amounts to an attempt to fit a square peg in a round hole.
A warrant would not only be an inappropriate solution to
this problem, but possibly counterproductive as well. A detour
to obtain a warrant would have delayed or frustrated the offi-
cer’s pressing mission to safely reunite the young child with
her parents or guardian. It is not clear, moreover, what the
officer was to do with the child in the meantime. Leaving the
girl where she was while securing a warrant would only pro-
long her exposure to mishap and danger. Just dropping her at
home would not be much better, because the officer was not
sure anyone was there to care for her. Leaving her with a
neighbor begs the question of whether a neighbor was at
home, or willing and able to assume responsibility. It was also
not unreasonable for Officer Ratliff to decline to take the
four-year-old girl to a stationhouse or a state agency under
these circumstances. So while warrants are an invaluable tool
for managing police discretion, the Constitution does not
demand their use in every home emergency outside the crimi-
nal justice framework.
Taylor further insists that even if a warrant is not required,
probable cause to believe that the house contained the object
of Ratliff’s search was still necessary. We find this contention
UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 7
deficient for the same reasons just discussed—probable cause
is a standard that is appropriate for matters of criminal investi-
gation. See Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J, 515 U.S. at 653; John-
son, 410 F.3d at 144. Although it is true that home entries
involving exceptions to the warrant requirement frequently
require probable cause, those cases are firmly situated within
the criminal justice framework. In United States v. Cephas,
254 F.3d 488 (4th Cir. 2001), on which Taylor relies, an offi-
cer was investigating a tip that there were illegal drugs in an
apartment when he entered to prevent destruction of the con-
traband. As this case lies outside of that investigative rubric,
the probable cause standard remains properly foreign to an
analysis of Officer Ratliff’s conduct.
III.
A.
That a warrant was not necessary here does not mean that
anything goes. Rather, we fall back on "the ultimate touch-
stone of the Fourth Amendment" which is reasonableness,
measured objectively. Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398,
403 (2006). Taylor claims that the officer’s entry to search for
a parent or guardian also fails under this standard. We agree
that not just any claimed justification will suffice to excuse a
warrantless home entry, for "the right of a man to retreat into
his own home and there be free from unreasonable govern-
ment intrusion" is at "the very core" of Fourth Amendment
protection. Silverman v. United States, 365 U.S. 505, 511
(1961).
Especially outside of criminal justice matters, however,
there is an objective basis that makes police entry reasonable:
the presence of exigent circumstances. An officer may enter
the home if "the exigencies of the situation make the needs of
law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless search is
objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amendment." Mincey
v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 394 (1978) (quotation omitted).
8 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
Then-Judge Burger described the driving force behind the
exception for exigent circumstances: "[A] warrant is not
required to break down a door to enter a burning home to res-
cue occupants or extinguish a fire, to prevent a shooting or to
bring emergency aid to an injured person. The need to protect
or preserve life or avoid serious injury is justification for what
would be otherwise illegal absent an exigency or emergency."
Wayne v. United States, 318 F.2d 205, 212 (D.C. Cir. 1963).
In Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 509 (1978), the
Supreme Court applied the exigent circumstances doctrine
and noted that "it would defy reason to suppose that firemen
must secure a warrant or consent before entering a burning
structure to put out the blaze." This court concluded in United
States v. Gwinn, 219 F.3d 326 (4th Cir. 2000), that the exi-
gency created by the risk of injury to a man arrested without
shirt or shoes provided objectively reasonable grounds for a
re-entry into his home to obtain clothing.
Most recently, in Hunsberger v. Wood, 570 F.3d 546 (4th
Cir. 2009), we held that exigent circumstances justified the
nighttime entry into a home reported by a neighbor to be
unoccupied while its owners were on vacation. In addition to
indicia of ongoing vandalism of the home and reports of
recent arson in the neighborhood, there was evidence that a
teenage girl whose parents could not locate her was inside the
home and not answering her cell phone. Id. at 555. In those
circumstances, there was an objective basis that made the
warrantless entry reasonable. Id.
The circumstances surrounding this four-year-old girl’s
unsupervised odyssey constituted an emergency that made
Officer Ratliff’s actions no less reasonable. Simply as a gen-
eral matter, "the absence of responsible adult supervision of
children is an exigent circumstance justifying a warrantless
entry." People v. Peterson, 543 S.E.2d 692, 696 (Ga. 2001).
It is a truth too evident to be told that children learn to move
about long before they learn to exercise good judgment. That
UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 9
this small child was wandering alone along a busy street made
matters even more pressing. It is undisputed that the street
was a thoroughfare, commonly used by drivers as an alternate
route to avoid traffic lights, with significant traffic throughout
the day.
Few places could be less appropriate for an unattended
child. Abduction and a collision with a vehicle on the heavily
traveled road are but two of the most obvious perils that she
faced. If, as the Ninth Circuit has concluded, "[t]he possibility
of a nine-year-old child in a house in the middle of the night
without the supervision of any responsible adult is a situation
requiring immediate police assistance," see United States v.
Bradley, 321 F.3d 1212, 1215 (9th Cir. 2003), then the offi-
cer’s assistance was warranted here, where a much younger
child was not even in the safety of a house. The danger that
abandonment posed to this young girl’s welfare made clear
that the officer’s entry to find her parents or guardian or care-
taker was a reasonable one.
Nor was the exigency strictly limited to the girl herself, for
a child of such tender age wandering alone outside the home
raised the real possibility that her caretaker was unconscious
or otherwise in need of assistance. The district court noted
this point in particular, that "[u]nder no circumstances should
a four-year-old child be left alone at home, so the officer
knew that there should be someone at home with the child."
JA 113. When yelling from the doorway produced no
response, a reasonable officer could have concluded that
someone inside may well have needed help. Although the girl
did state that no one was home, her youth and time spent wan-
dering away from the house that morning called the basis of
her knowledge for that pronouncement into question. Under
the circumstances, the district court was right to conclude that
there was "an objectively reasonable belief that something
might be awry" within the home, and that Officer Ratliff did
the reasonable thing by following the child inside in an effort
to render assistance and to ensure the child’s safety. JA 113.
10 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
The reasonable belief that prompt assistance was needed
distinguishes this case from United States v. Moss, 963 F.2d
673 (4th Cir. 1992), where we held that a forest service offi-
cer’s warrantless entry into a cabin thought to be illegally
occupied was unreasonable. In that case, where the officer
suspected a crime had taken place, there simply was no basis
at all to support "any objectively reasonable perception of an
emergency that required immediate identification of the occu-
pants in order to give them assistance—or indeed that assis-
tance was needed." Id. at 679. Here, by contrast, both the self-
evident danger that the abandoned child posed to herself and
the inference of danger to her caretaker made it reasonable to
conclude that it was necessary to make a brief entry to find
someone inside the home—and to do so promptly.
B.
That Officer Ratliff’s initial entry was reasonable does not
exhaust the concerns of the Fourth Amendment. Rather, the
scope of the ensuing search must also be reasonable. Indeed,
"[a]ny search following warrantless entry for emergency rea-
sons . . . must then be limited by the type of emergency
involved. It cannot be used as the occasion for a general voy-
age of discovery unrelated to the purpose of the entry." United
States v. Moss, 963 F.2d 673, 678 (4th Cir. 1992) (citation
omitted).
Under these circumstances, Officer Ratliff’s conduct did
not transgress constitutional boundaries. He made no effort to
search. He looked at no papers or personal effects; he scruti-
nized no areas that could not contain an adult who needed
assistance or could care for the child. Rather, Ratliff simply
yelled "hello"—an innocuous query offered solely in the
benign hope of finding a parent or guardian. As the district
court noted, "If a responsible adult had responded to Ratliff’s
initial calls of ‘hello’ and had provided identification demon-
strating that he or she was the child’s parent or guardian, that
would have been the end of it. Indeed, when [the child’s
UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 11
mother] arrived and Ratliff was able to determine that she was
the child’s mother, he left the child with her." JA 112. The
entry was thus "‘strictly circumscribed’" by the exigency that
led to it. See Gwinn, 219 F.3d at 332 (quoting Mincey v. Ari-
zona, 437 U.S. 385, 393 (1978)).
It is true that when Ratliff and the child happened upon
Taylor upstairs, he did not need assistance and Ratliff did not
leave the child with him. However, the officer did not act
unreasonably by heeding the signs counseling caution before
leaving the girl with Taylor. First of all, Taylor had no identi-
fication or other means of proving that he was in fact the
girl’s father. Secondly, he could not recite the address of the
house he had been sleeping in. This would be a curious lapse
of memory in a person whose child actually lived in the
house. Finally, the transparent bag of bullets in plain view
near the bed and Taylor’s visible anger with the child would
have left any temporary guardian of her ill at ease. When
Officer Ratliff verified that the identity Taylor had provided
was patently false, the protective sweep that revealed the gun
under the mattress was justified not only for the officer’s own
safety but for that of the child as well. Finally, as the district
court noted, the protective search was limited to "the area
from within which the defendant might gain possession of a
weapon." JA 114. Only upon "Ratliff’s determination of the
defendant’s true identity" was the defendant "arrested and
charged with felon in possession of a firearm and for provid-
ing false information to police." Id.
We find nothing unreasonable in this chain of events. "An
effort to return a small child to its home after it has been
found locked out, lonely and unattended is not unreasonable.
Further, . . . it is not unreasonable to determine if the child
may be safely left at its home." In re Dawn O., 128 Cal. Rptr.
852, 854 (Cal. Ct. App. 1976). The Supreme Court has recog-
nized that "customary social usage" will have a "substantial
bearing on Fourth Amendment reasonableness in specific cir-
cumstances," Georgia v. Randolph, 547 U.S. 103, 121 (2006),
12 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
and we find it difficult to believe that the officer’s solicitude
for the interests of both parents and children here would vio-
late customary social understanding in any sense. As Justice
Holmes remarked long ago, law does not lightly place itself
at odds with "the general habits of the community," at least
where the relevant standard is one of reasonableness. Hawkes
v. Locke, 1 N.E. 543, 544 (Mass. 1885).
IV.
So what else in the final analysis should the officer have
done? Taylor insists that Officer Ratliff’s entry was unreason-
able because there were less intrusive options available. We
find this contention curious. Not only does Taylor fail to offer
any superior alternatives, but the inferiority of Taylor’s sug-
gested options reinforces the reasonableness of what Officer
Ratliff actually did. Taylor submits in his brief that the officer
would have done better by "leaving a note on the front door
while taking the child to safety." Brief of Appellant at 30.
Where, then, was she to be taken? Taylor’s brief offers not a
clue. And no wonder—an officer can hardly be expected to
serve as an indefinite babysitter, and a police station is hardly
a proper daycare facility for a four-year-old child.
At oral argument, Taylor also proposed that Officer Ratliff
should have undertaken an intensive fact-finding mission. In
Taylor’s view, the proper thing to do was to question the child
in detail, then to take the girl around to "talk to neighbors
[and] ask questions," and to "keep asking questions and look-
ing for evidence that would actually support a reasonable
belief that someone was inside the home."
This proposal has several drawbacks. First, it assumes that
this four-year-old child had more relevant data to contribute.
It also assumes without basis that any neighbors who had
information about the child’s family or daycare plans would
have been home at that mid-day hour. Finally, officers con-
fronting potential emergencies such as this one "need [to
UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR 13
make] an on-the-spot judgment based on incomplete informa-
tion and sometimes ambiguous facts bearing upon the poten-
tial for serious consequences." United States v. Martins, 413
F.3d 139, 147 (1st Cir. 2005). The officer did just that, and
we will not engage in "should have/could have/would have"
hindsight to undercut his objectively reasonable belief that the
best way to speedily reunite parent and child was to do pre-
cisely what he did.
Even if Taylor could point to an unproblematic alternative,
it would offer no support to his contention that Officer Ratliff
behaved unreasonably. The Supreme Court has made clear
that reasonableness analysis "does not require employing the
least intrusive means, because the logic of such elaborate less-
restrictive-alternative arguments could raise insuperable barri-
ers to the exercise of virtually all search-and-seizure powers."
Safford Unified Sch. Dist. #1 v. Redding, 129 S. Ct. 2633,
2652 n.4 (2009) (quoting Bd. of Educ. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822,
837 (2002)); see also Hunsberger, 570 F.3d at 556 ("[T]he
fact that the protection of the public might, in the abstract,
have been accomplished by less intrusive means does not, by
itself, render the search unreasonable.") (quoting Cady v.
Dombrowski, 413 U.S. 433, 447 (1973)). The officer’s behav-
ior was reasonably calculated to reunite his young charge with
her family; to require more would threaten the safe and
speedy return of other lost children.*
V.
We recognize that any intrusion into the home, whether for
criminal investigation or for more benign purposes, poses a
threat to that privacy we hold most dear. For that reason, war-
*Because we conclude that exigent circumstances rendered Officer
Ratliff’s conduct objectively reasonable, we need not address the question
of whether the entry was also permissible under the community caretaking
doctrine. It suffices to say that the officer responded reasonably to an
emergency, and therefore the Fourth Amendment was not violated.
14 UNITED STATES v. TAYLOR
rantless entries outside of the criminal justice rubric must be
scrutinized carefully under the standard of objective reason-
ableness. In this case, the district court did just that and
arrived at a practical and commonsense application of the law.
The implications of reversing that court might not only
redound to the detriment of small children but amount to a
constitutional proclamation that no good deed goes unpun-
ished and that law enforcement cannot act to prevent harm or
to serve an undisputed public good. The officer acted with
caution in the legitimate belief that protection of the most vul-
nerable members of our society would not become a constitu-
tional infraction. The restrictions urged by appellant would
not be in the interests of small children, would not be in the
interests of their parents, and would not be in the interests of
the community. We shall accordingly affirm the district court.
AFFIRMED