When prosecutors have no other way to justify a warrantless search they claim that exigent circumstances require immediate action and that peace officers did not have time to obtain a search warrant. In United States v. Washington they not only claimed exigent circumstances but they claimed that Mr. Washington did not have standing to object to the search.

George Young rented an apartment in Cincinnati, Ohio. While he was serving a term in the local jail, his nephew, Tracy Washington was house sitting. At the time of Young’s arrest he told Washington to secure the apartment and to keep people out of the apartment. Nevertheless the apartment manager told the officers that no one, including Washington, was to be in the apartment while Young was in jail.

Early on Christmas morning the local police came to the residence without a search warrant and accused Washington of trespassing. Over Washington’s objection they patted him down and searched the apartment. Drugs, paraphernalia and a gun was found.

Washington was charged with gun and drug charges. He moved to suppress the evidence. The court granted his motion and the government appealed.

A defendant has standing to move to suppress evidence if objectively and subjectively he has a right to privacy in the area searched. If you are living in the area searched, as Washington was, you have a privacy right in the apartment. The government attempted to claim that because Young was behind in paying the rent, Washington was subject to to eviction and therefore could not have a privacy right in the apartment. But under Ohio law while he was subject to eviction no action had been taken and he continued to have a right to privacy in the apartment.

The government also argued that since he was committing criminal acts in the apartment he lost his right to privacy in the apartment. The court pointed out that this was absurd in that if this was true the Fourth Amendment would be meaningless.

Therefore the court found that Washington had standing to bring the motion to suppress the evidence.

The next issue is whether the warrantless search violated the Fourth Amendment. The prosecutor argued that exigent circumstances justified the search. The Supreme Court has found four instances in which exigent circumstances are applicable:

(1) to engage in hot pursuit of a fleeing felon; (2) to prevent the imminent destruction of evidence; (3) to prevent a suspect from escaping; and (4) to prevent imminent harm to police or third parties.

The government did not claim that any of these factors were relevant. While the Sixth Circuit has found a couple more instances where exigent circumstances exist it should only be used

As [the court has] repeatedly and consistently observed, the critical issue is whether there is a “true immediacy” that absolves an officer from the need to apply for a warrant and receive approval from an impartial magistrate

In this case the court found no great immediacy. It is true that several days before Christmas people were seen going into the apartment with a gun. But there was no evidence that the gun was being used. Drug use is a serious problem but if drug use was necessarily an exigent circumstance the warrant requirement would be meaningless.

The court particularly did not want to get around the warrant requirement since the alleged harm, trespassing is relatively trivial. As a result the Court found that the search was unreasonable and it upheld the suppression of the evidence.