In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-2170
S HARON B OGAN,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
C ITY OF C HICAGO, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:09-cv-03852—Matthew F. Kennelly, Judge.
A RGUED JANUARY 20, 2011—D ECIDED JULY 6, 2011
Before R IPPLE and H AMILTON, Circuit Judges, and
M URPHY, District Judge.
R IPPLE, Circuit Judge. Sharon Bogan brought this
action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in which she claimed
that two Chicago police officers, Matthew Breen and
The Honorable G. Patrick Murphy, United States District
Judge for the Southern District of Illinois, is sitting by designa-
tion.
2 No. 10-2170
William Langley, had violated her rights under the
Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United
States when they entered and searched her home with-
out a warrant. The case was tried before a jury, and the
jury returned a verdict in the officers’ favor. Ms. Bogan
now appeals. She maintains that the district court
erred in instructing the jury and in rendering certain
evidentiary rulings. For the reasons set forth in the fol-
lowing opinion, we affirm the judgment of the district
court.
I
BACKGROUND
A. Facts
At about 2:30 a.m. on May 9, 2009, Officers Breen and
Langley responded to a report of domestic battery at
the apartment of Nicole Evans. Evans’s eight-year-old
son had dialed 911 and stated that his mother was
being beaten. Upon arriving at the second floor apart-
ment, the officers knocked on the door and announced
their presence; a male voice from inside the apartment
yelled, “What the f - - - - do you want?” R.123 at 190.
They also heard a woman screaming for help. They fol-
lowed the sounds of the woman’s pleas and located her
on the roof of the building.
When they found Evans, she was in a state of partial
undress and mentally distraught. She explained that her
No. 10-2170 3
boyfriend,1 Antonio Pearson, had been drinking all
day with friends. When Evans tried to wake him, Pearson
had beaten and choked her. The officers led Evans off
the roof into a stairwell; at that point, they observed
that she had “[l]acerations, scratch marks around her
neck and also bruising and scratch marks on her arms.”
R.123 at 239. Evans told the officers that she wanted
Pearson arrested. Officers Breen and Langley went
back up onto the roof to find a way into the apartment,
where they believed Pearson likely had gone and
where Evans’s children still were.
Through the window, Officer Langley then spotted
an African-American male in the bedroom of the apart-
ment. After making eye contact with Officer Langley, the
man ran out of the bedroom to the rear of the apartment.
The officers entered the apartment through an open
window and searched every room in the apartment;
while in the apartment, the officers received a flash mes-
sage informing them that there was a black male on
the rear porch of the building.
The officers then proceeded across the hall through
an open doorway. Although there was a stairwell to the
right, the officers did not believe that Pearson could
have escaped down the stairs because other officers had
arrived at the scene. Across the hall was a door, which
they believed led directly to the porch or a mudroom
adjacent to the porch. They tried the handle on the
1
The record is unclear if Antonio Pearson is Evans’s husband
or boyfriend.
4 No. 10-2170
door, but it was locked. Officer Breen then kicked the
door once or twice, but it was opened from within by
Ms. Bogan.
Ms. Bogan asked the officers for whom they were
looking. They responded Evans’s boyfriend. Ms. Bogan
replied, “That’s my son.” R.124 at 18. At the time that
Ms. Bogan opened her apartment door, there were be-
tween ten and twelve Chicago police officers already in
her apartment; they apparently had entered through
the back door. Officers Breen and Langley conducted
a search of her apartment, but they could not locate
Pearson.
B. District Court Proceedings
Ms. Bogan instituted this action; she alleged that
Officers Breen and Langley had violated her Fourth
Amendment rights by entering and searching her apart-
ment without a warrant.2 At trial, Officer Breen answered
the following question posed by his counsel:
Q. . . . At the time that you’re moving through
Nicole Evans’ apartment, did you believe
Antonio Pearson was moving to the rear
of the building?
A. Yes.
2
Ms. Bogan also named the City of Chicago “to obtain a
declaratory judgment of the City’s obligation to indemnify
defendants . . . for any judgment which may be entered
against [them] for compensatory damages.” R.16 at 1.
No. 10-2170 5
R.123 at 196. Ms. Bogan’s counsel objected to the testi-
mony on the ground that the question whether
Ms. Bogan’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated is
governed by an objective standard; consequently, the
officer’s subjective beliefs were irrelevant. The district
court responded: “It doesn’t mean subjective evidence
is irrelevant. The objection is overruled.” Id. Following
this ruling, Ms. Bogan’s counsel did not object to other
questions designed to elicit the officers’ impressions
or understanding of the situation. See id. at 197 (“What
did you expect was behind that door?”); id. at 202
(“Was there time to make an effort to secure a warrant
at this time? . . . Why not?”); R.124 at 8 (“And I believe
we left off with the issue of whether you had any reason
to believe there was a living quarters behind that door.
And what is your memory of that, sir?”). Ms. Bogan’s
counsel, however, did examine the officers extensively
on what they had observed and how reasonable—or
unreasonable—their actions might have been on the
evening they searched Ms. Bogan’s apartment. See R.123
at 210 (“And you didn’t have time to get a warrant? . . .
And you didn’t see that person that you were searching
for go into the apartment? . . . Nobody told you he
went into the apartment? . . . You just guessed that he’s
more likely to be in the apartment than down the stairs;
is that right?”); id. at 225 (“So you looked through every
room in that . . . apartment for Antonio; is that right? . . .
And you did that because you didn’t have any reason
to believe he had left; isn’t that right?”); id. at 234-35
(“You never heard [Pearson] open any doors to get out
of the apartment? . . . You didn’t see any footprints in
6 No. 10-2170
the hallway between the two apartments? . . . Nobody
told you that he was in the rear apartment, did they?”).
At the close of evidence, the district court instructed
the jury that it was Ms. Bogan’s burden to establish that
the officers had violated her rights. The court stated:
As a general rule, a police officer must have
a search warrant before he may enter a person’s
home or search a person’s home. However, the
law establishes certain exceptions to the require-
ment of a search warrant. One of those excep-
tions is referred to as the hot pursuit exception.
Under this exception, a police officer may enter
a person’s home if, under all the circumstances, a
reasonable officer would believe that the entry
is necessary to prevent the escape of a person who
is suspected of a crime and there is insufficient
time to obtain a search warrant. The question is
what a reasonable officer would believe, not
what the particular officers in this case actually
believed.
To succeed on their claim in this case as to
the particular defendant you’re considering,
Ms. Bogan must prove by a preponderance of the
evidence that a reasonable officer in the defen-
dant’s position would not have believed that a
crime suspect was in Ms. Bogan’s home.
No. 10-2170 7
R.124 at 90-91.3 After deliberating for just over an hour,
the jury returned a verdict for the defendants. The
district court later denied Ms. Bogan’s motion for judg-
ment as a matter of law and entered judgment for the
officers on the jury verdict. Ms. Bogan timely appealed.
II
DISCUSSION
A. Instructional Error
Ms. Bogan first maintains that the district court’s in-
struction on burden of proof constituted reversible
error. According to Ms. Bogan, the burden of proof fell
on the officers to establish that their actions were
justified by exigent circumstances. “We review jury
instructions de novo to determine whether, taken as a
whole, they correctly and completely informed the jury
of the applicable law.” Huff v. Sheahan, 493 F.3d 893, 899
(7th Cir. 2007). “We defer to the district court’s phrasing
of an instruction that accurately states the law; however,
we shall reverse when the instructions ‘misstate the
law or fail to convey the relevant legal principles in
full’ and when those shortcomings confuse or mislead
the jury and prejudice the objecting litigant.” Id. (quoting
Byrd v. Illinois Dep’t of Pub. Health, 423 F.3d 696, 705
(7th Cir. 2005)) (additional internal citation omitted).
3
The district court had employed the same language as part
of its preliminary instructions to the jury. See R.123 at 149.
8 No. 10-2170
We have not addressed the precise question raised by
this appeal: In a § 1983 warrantless-search action, in
which the defendants claim that the search was justified
based on exigent circumstances, which party bears the
burden of proving the presence or absence of such cir-
cumstances? However, we have confronted a related
question. In Valance v. Wisel, 110 F.3d 1269 (7th Cir. 1997),
we addressed the issue of which party in a warrantless-
search case bears the burden of establishing the plain-
tiff’s consent—or lack of consent—to the search. In
Valance, after recognizing that the circuits were split on
the issue of who, in the civil context, bore the burden of
proof on this issue, we expressed agreement with the
approach taken by the Second Circuit in Ruggiero v.
Krzeminski, 928 F.2d 558 (2d Cir. 1991). We stated:
In Ruggiero, for example, the Second Circuit
observed that although a warrantless search gener-
ally is considered presumptively unreasonable,
“[t]he operation of this presumption . . . cannot
serve to place on the defendant the burden of
proving that the official action was reasonable.”
928 F.2d at 563. The court concluded that at most,
the presumption may require the defendant to
produce evidence of consent or of some other recog-
nized exception to the warrant requirement. Id. Yet
once the defendant has done so, “the ultimate
risk of nonpersuasion must remain squarely on
the plaintiff in accordance with established princi-
ples governing civil trials.” Id. (citing Fed. R.
Evid. 301).
No. 10-2170 9
We generally agree with Ruggiero’s formulation
of the proper allocation of the parties’ burdens
in a section 1983 action alleging a Fourth Amend-
ment violation.
Valance, 110 F.3d at 1278-79 (emphasis added) (alteration
in original) (additional internal citations omitted). We
noted that, “[e]ven if a presumption of unreasonableness
arises from the fact of a warrantless search, that does not
serve in a civil case to shift ‘the burden of proof in the
sense of the risk of nonpersuasion.’ ” Id. at 1279 (quoting
Fed. R. Evid. 301). Instead, “[t]he presumption merely
serves to impose on the defendant ‘the burden of going
forward with evidence to meet or rebut the presump-
tion,’ which a defendant would do by presenting
evidence that the plaintiff consented to the search.” Id.
(quoting Fed. R. Evid. 301) (internal citation omitted).
Consequently, “[i]n order to prove that the search was
unreasonable, . . . the plaintiff would be required to show
either that he never consented or that the consent was
invalid because it was given under duress or coercion.” Id.
Our reasoning in Valance was informed by the nature
of civil cases and the principle that, in civil cases, the
plaintiff must bear the ultimate burden of nonpersuasion.
As suggested by our language in Valance, as well as that
of the Second Circuit in Ruggiero, this rationale applies
with equal force whether the officers seek to justify
their search based on consent or on “some other recog-
nized exception.” Valance, 110 F.3d at 1278.
Ms. Bogan acknowledges our holding in Valance but
argues that it should not apply to the circumstances
10 No. 10-2170
presented here. Ms. Bogan maintains that the dis-
tinction between consent and exigent circumstances is
an important one: The facts that determine whether
a plaintiff consented to a search are uniquely within
the plaintiff’s knowledge; however, the facts that
establish exigent circumstances are uniquely within the
knowledge of the pursuing officers. We do not find
this distinction persuasive. No part of our analysis
in Valance included reference to what information was
uniquely available either to the plaintiff or to the defen-
dant. Furthermore, Ms. Bogan does not point us to
any Fourth Amendment cases for which this considera-
tion played a role in determining the allocation of the
burden of proof. To the contrary, as the Government
demonstrates, other aspects of Fourth Amendment juris-
prudence undermine Ms. Bogan’s contention. For ex-
ample, “a plaintiff claiming that he was arrested without
probable cause carries the burden of establishing the
absence of probable cause,” McBride v. Grice, 576 F.3d
703, 706 (7th Cir. 2009) (per curiam); however, whether
an officer had probable cause for an arrest is wholly
dependent upon the facts known to the officer at the time
of the arrest.
Ms. Bogan also argues that extending Valance’s
rationale to searches justified on exigent circumstances
would place us at odds with our sister circuits.
Specifically, in her reply brief, she contends that this
court would create a split among the circuits if it were
to “hold that it is proper to instruct a jury that plaintiff
has the burden of [] disproving the existence of exigent
circumstances to justify a warrantless entry into the
home.” Reply Br. 7.
No. 10-2170 11
It is true that some circuits have placed the burden
of proof on the officer to establish exigent circumstances,
see, e.g., Armijo ex rel. Armijo Sanchez v. Peterson, 601
F.3d 1065, 1070 (10th Cir. 2010). However, there gen-
erally “is a difference of opinion in the federal courts as
to the burden of proof applicable to § 1983 unconstitu-
tional false arrest claims.” Davis v. Rodriguez, 364 F.3d
424, 433 n.8 (2d Cir. 2004) (observing that the Fifth
and Eleventh Circuits place the burden of proof on the
plaintiff and the Third and Tenth Circuits place the
burden of proof on the officers); see also Trulock v. Freeh,
275 F.3d 391, 401 n.4 (4th Cir. 2001) (noting the existence
of a split specifically with respect to the burden of estab-
lishing consent). Moreover, this split predated our deci-
sion in Valance. See Davis, 364 F.3d at 433 n.8 (citing cases).
Thus, extending the rationale of Valance to exigent cir-
cumstances may deepen a preexisting circuit split, but
it does not create a new one.
Moreover, we do not find the reasoning of the opinions
on which Ms. Bogan relies persuasive. Ms. Bogan points
to four court of appeals opinions in her reply brief:
Hardesty v. Hamburg Township, 461 F.3d 646, 655 (6th Cir.
2006); Parkhurst v. Trapp, 77 F.3d 707, 711 (3d Cir. 1996);
Hopkins v. Bonvicino, 573 F.3d 752, 764 (9th Cir. 2009); and
Armijo ex rel. Armijo Sanchez v. Peterson, 601 F.3d 1065, 1070
(10th Cir. 2010). Each of these cases, without discussion,
recites the proposition that “[t]he government bears the
burden of proving that exigent circumstances . . . existed
to justify a warrantless search,” Hardesty, 461 F.3d at
655, and relies on a criminal case for support, see, e.g., id.
(citing United States v. Bates, 84 F.3d 790, 794 (6th Cir.
12 No. 10-2170
1996)). However, for the reasons set forth in Valance
and Ruggiero, employing a criminal burden of proof is
contrary to “ ‘established principles governing civil tri-
als,’ ” namely, that “ ‘the ultimate risk of nonpersuasion
must remain squarely on the plaintiff.’ ” Valance, 110
F.3d at 1278 (quoting Ruggiero, 928 F.2d at 563).4
4
Ms. Bogan also argues that “[p]lacing the burden of proof on
the defendant would be in accord with the common law rule
‘that once a plaintiff showed arrest and imprisonment without
process, the burden shifted to the defendant to show justifica-
tion.’ ” Appellant’s Br. 19 (quoting Patzig v. O’Neil, 577 F.2d
841, 849 n.9 (3d Cir. 1978)). However, this case does not
involve a claim of false imprisonment, but of a warrantless
search. Moreover, in this circuit, we long have followed the
rule that “a plaintiff claiming that he was arrested without
probable cause carries the burden of establishing the absence
of probable cause.” McBride v. Grice, 576 F.3d 703, 706 (7th Cir.
2009) (per curiam) (collecting cases). Finally, we note that one
of the cases that Ms. Bogan relies upon, Martin v. Duffie, 463
F.2d 464, 467 (10th Cir. 1972), actually outlines much of the
same analysis that we adopt here. In Martin, the Tenth Circuit
stated:
It is true that the burden was on the plaintiff to estab-
lish an invasion of his rights: an illegal arrest. He did
so by showing arrest and confinement without a
warrant and without other justification. The plaintiff
having established a prima facie case, the initiative
passed to the defendant to go forward with evidence
showing justification. Ultimately plaintiff had what
is often described as the risk of nonpersuasion on the
(continued...)
No. 10-2170 13
4
(...continued)
issue of lack of probable cause. In the case at bar we
hold that plaintiff has sustained his burden of proof
as to lack of probable cause and in the dearth of ex-
planatory evidence was entitled to judgment.
Id. at 469.
Although Ms. Bogan has not come forward with any Seventh
Circuit law suggesting that the Valance approach may not be
appropriate, the officers did identify two cases which, it notes,
conceivably could be read to support Ms. Bogan’s argument
on burden of proof: Jacobs v. City of Chicago, 215 F.3d 758, 770
(7th Cir. 2000), and Llaguno v. Mingey, 763 F.2d 1560 (7th Cir.
1985) (en banc), abrogated on other grounds by County of
Riverside v. McLaughlin, 500 U.S. 44 (1985).
In Jacobs, the district court had dismissed the plaintiff’s
complaint on qualified immunity grounds. According to the
complaint, officers had sought and obtained a warrant to
search “ ’Troy,’ a 30-year-old black male, and a single family
residence at 15138 Lincoln Avenue.” Jacobs, 215 F.3d at 763-64.
When the officers arrived at the address, they discovered it
was an apartment building and executed the warrant on the
first floor apartment. The owner-occupant of the apartment
advised the officers that there were two other apartments in
the building, none occupied by a Troy. The officers, neverthe-
less, broke down the door of the second floor apartment,
where Jacobs, a sixty-year-old man, resided; one officer held
a gun to Jacobs’s head, while the other officer ransacked the
apartment. Jacobs later brought suit against the officers for
Fourth Amendment violations. The district court granted the
defendant-officers’ motion to dismiss on qualified immunity
(continued...)
14 No. 10-2170
Finally, Ms. Bogan maintains that, even if Valance articu-
lates the correct standard, “[t]his Court has cautioned
4
(...continued)
grounds. On appeal, we noted that “the notice pleading re-
quirements of Rule 8 do not require that a plaintiff anticipate
the assertion of qualified immunity by the defendant and
plead allegations that will defeat that immunity.” Id. at 765 n.3.
Instead, it was incumbent on the “Defendant Officers to
show that they had probable cause.” Id. at 770. Because the
facts as alleged in the complaint gave “no indication that
exigent circumstances existed in this case,” id., we reversed
the district court’s dismissal of the complaint and remanded
for further proceedings.
We believe that the statement in Jacobs must be placed in the
procedural context in which it arises, namely, a motion to
dismiss. For pleading purposes, a plaintiff need not anticipate,
and eliminate, every possible exception to the warrant re-
quirement. The same rule does not apply, however, when,
after a trial on the merits, the defendants have come forward
with evidence that they were in hot pursuit of a violent offender.
In Llaguno, the court found the entire probable-cause in-
struction inadequate. See Llaguno, 763 F.2d at 1568-69. The
court then “add[ed] that, on retrial, the instructions should
emphasize the importance that the Fourth Amendment has
been interpreted to place on having a magistrate make the
judgment of probable cause. The burden of proof should be
placed on the police to establish the existence of an emergency
that prevented them from obtaining a warrant.” Id. at 1569.
Llaguno cited no authority for this proposition, and, moreover,
that decision predates our holding in Valance, which clearly
addresses the issue of burden of proof.
No. 10-2170 15
against instructing juries about burden shifting models
in employment cases.” Appellant’s Br. 17. However,
after reviewing the instruction on burden of proof,
see supra at 6, we have no concerns regarding jury con-
fusion. The instruction did not take the jury, in
detail, through the burden-shifting mechanism set forth
in Valance; there was no mention of the burden shifting,
nor did the instruction require the jury to distinguish
burden of proof from burden of production. Because
the officers had come forward with evidence of exigent
circumstances, the only question posed to the jury was
whether Ms. Bogan had met her ultimate burden of
showing that the police did not reasonably believe that
Pearson would be found in Ms. Bogan’s apartment. The
district court’s instruction on burden of proof correctly
and clearly stated the law, and, consequently, we find
no error on this basis.
B. Evidentiary Rulings
As we noted earlier, at trial Officer Breen was allowed
to answer the following question posed by counsel: “At
the time that you’re moving through Nicole Evans’ apart-
ment, did you believe Antonio Pearson was moving to
the rear of the building?” R.123 at 196. Ms. Bogan main-
tains that this question elicited Officer Breen’s subjec-
tive beliefs and that those beliefs were irrelevant to
the issue before the jury—whether the officers had con-
ducted an illegal search. We review a district court’s
evidentiary rulings for an abuse of discretion. See, e.g.,
United States v. Owens, 424 F.3d 649, 653 (7th Cir. 2005).
16 No. 10-2170
The exigent circumstances doctrine recognizes that
there may be situations in which law enforcement
officials may be presented with “ ‘a compelling need’ ” to
conduct a search, but have “ ‘no time to secure a war-
rant.’ ” United States v. Dowell, 724 F.2d 599, 602 (7th Cir.
1984) (quoting Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U.S. 499, 509 (1978)).
The doctrine has been applied to the escape of a suspect
and also to situations that pose a danger to the officers
or to others. See id. (citing Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294,
298-300 (1967)). “[A] police officer’s subjective belief
that exigent circumstances exist is insufficient” to justify
a warrantless search. United States v. Richardson, 208 F.3d
626, 629 (7th Cir. 2000). Instead, “[w]hen reviewing
a warrantless search to determine if exigent circumstances
existed, this Court conducts an objective review”; we
ask whether “a reasonable officer had a ‘reasonable
belief that there was a compelling need to act and no
time to obtain a warrant.’ ” United States v. Andrews, 442
F.3d 996, 1000 (7th Cir. 2006) (quoting United States v.
Saadeh, 61 F.3d 510, 516 (7th Cir. 1995)). We do not make
this determination on “the facts as an omniscient
observer would perceive them,” but on the totality of facts
and circumstances “as they would have appeared to a
reasonable person in the position of the . . . officer—seeing
what he saw, hearing what he heard.” Mahoney v. Kesery,
976 F.2d 1054, 1057 (7th Cir. 1992) (emphasis in original).
When placed against this background, the offending
question and answer here did not call for the officer’s
subjective assessment of the reasonableness of his ac-
tions. Instead, it was one of a series of questions designed
to explain his progress through Evans’s apartment—what
No. 10-2170 17
deductions he had made from the information he knew.
Consequently, this information was helpful to the jury
in assessing whether the officer’s actions were objectively
reasonable under the circumstances presented.
C. Judgment as a Matter of Law
Ms. Bogan also seeks review of the district court’s de-
nial of her motion for judgment as a matter of law. We
review a denial of a motion for judgment as a matter of
law de novo, “ ‘examining the record as a whole to de-
termine whether the evidence presented, combined with
all reasonable inferences permissibly drawn therefrom,
was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict.’ ” Walker v.
Bd. of Regents of the Univ. of Wis. Sys., 410 F.3d 387, 393
(7th Cir. 2005) (quoting Millbrook v. IBP, Inc., 280 F.3d
1169, 1173 (7th Cir. 2002)). In undertaking this inquiry, we
must remember that “ ‘[c]redibility determinations, the
weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate
inferences from the facts’ ” are within the province of the
jury. Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc., 530 U.S. 133,
150-51 (2000) (quoting Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477
U.S. 242, 255 (1986)). We shall reverse the verdict only
if, on the basis of the admissible evidence, no rational
jury could have found for the prevailing party. Walker,
410 F.3d at 393.
Ms. Bogan maintains that the officers’ testimony was
utterly unbelievable. Indeed, during trial, Ms. Bogan’s
counsel went to great lengths to make this point. Specifi-
cally, counsel brought out weaknesses in the officers’
18 No. 10-2170
testimony with respect to what they observed,5 the infor-
mation in their possession 6 and the actions that they took.7
Despite counsel’s efforts, the jury heard evidence
that entitled it to believe the officers’ version of events.
Officer Langley testified that, after he made eye contact
with Pearson, Pearson ran out of the bedroom toward
the rear of the apartment. While searching Evans’s apart-
ment for Pearson, the officers received a flash message
that a black male was on the rear porch. Moving toward
the back of the apartment, the officers proceeded
through a doorway in the kitchen to a landing area or
short hall with a stairwell to the right and a door im-
mediately in front of them. Officer Breen testified
that, having heard sirens, he believed that officers had
surrounded the building and, therefore, that Pearson
could not have escaped down the stairs. Instead, the
officers believed that, given the flash message they
had received, Pearson had fled through the door onto
the back porch. The officers testified that they did
not recall the light in the hallway, nor did they observe
5
See R.123 at 182-84 (eliciting that Officer Breen did not
recall seeing a door in the kitchen or a light in the hallway).
6
See R.123 at 178 (questioning Officer Breen about whether
they had heard any doors slamming or footsteps to guide
their search); id. at 235 (eliciting from Officer Langley that the
officers had not received a flash message that “male black
was outside the second floor”).
7
See R.123 at 185 (questioning whether Officer Breen had
considered whether Pearson had escaped down the stairs).
No. 10-2170 19
anything on Ms. Bogan’s apartment door to suggest that
the door led to another apartment, as opposed to the
mudroom or porch. This testimony provided a suf-
ficient basis from which the jury could conclude that
the officers reasonably believed that a suspect was
behind the door of what turned out to be Ms. Bogan’s
apartment. Consequently, we shall not disturb the jury’s
verdict.
Conclusion
For the reasons set forth above, we affirm the judg-
ment of the district court.
A FFIRMED
7-6-11