In United States v. Cooks, No. 18-10080 (Apr. 3,
2019) (Newsom, Tjoflat, Gilman), the Court upheld the denial of the
defendant's motion to suppress.
The Court found that the warrantless search of a crawlspace
nailed down by a makeshift plywood door was justified by the
"emergency-aid" aspect of the exigent circumstances doctrine. There was an armed standoff with a gang
member that had evolved into a hostage taking situation, and the officers heard
drilling sounds coming from the house. After
the standoff ended, and although the officers did not know one way or another,
the Court found that they could have reasonably believed that the secured crawlspace
contained additional hostages. And
prying open that crawlspace was proportional to the exigency, because the area was
large enough to hide a person, and the search took no longer than necessary to
verify that nobody was there.
Judge Gilman dissented, opining that nothing suggested that
the officers believed or had reason to believe that the defendant was hiding
hostages in the crawlspace, let alone that additional people were inside the
house. He disagreed with the majority's
reasoning that the officers could have reached that conclusion because
they could not have definitively ruled it out.
