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STATE v. GEISLER5/11/1990
support of our conclusion, we specifically note that Barrett and Hiltz conceded that, aside from the possibility of injury, there existed no other emergency circumstance for a warrantless entry. " here is a significant difference between a police entry for the purpose of making an arrest or searching for evidence incident to a criminal investigation and an entry for purposes of rendering aid or saving human life." Id., 301.
Hiltz testified that, on the basis of his eleven years' experience of investigating motor vehicle accidents, he felt he would have been "negligent" if he did not go into the defendant's home to determine whether the defendant was injured. In support of Hiltz's belief that the defendant was possibly injured and, in accordance with the standards of the "emergency doctrine," in need of immediate aid, Hiltz testified that he had seen many motor vehicle accidents "where people have sustained an injury without any physical evidence at the site of injury, at the mechanism of injury." Hiltz's belief, however, is not supported by the evidence and, accordingly, does not comport with
the reasonable actions of a well trained officer under the totality of the circumstances of the present case.
"Since the [emergency] doctrine is an exception to the ordinary Fourth Amendment requirement of a warrant for entry into a home, the burden of proof is on the state to show that the warrantless entry fell within the exception." W. LaFave, supra, 6.6(a), p. 698; see also Mincey v. Arizona, supra, 390-91. The present case requires us to question whether there was any evidence to support a reasonable belief that an emergency existed, or, more specifically, that the defendant was in need of immediate assistance.
This case is unique in that it differs factually from the great majority of the "emergency doctrine" cases that involve common emergency situations (e.g., gunfire, fumes, smoke, explosion, screams, or bloody trails leading into a home). See W. LaFave, supra, for a litany of such cases; see also Wayne v. United States, 318 F.2d 205, 212 (D.C. Cir. 1963) (Burger, J., concurring). The case of Lambert v. State, 745 P.2d 1185 (Okla. Cr. 1987), although coming as factually close to the present case as any, is illustrative of that difference. In Lambert, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals held that the entry by police officers into the residence of a suspected drunken driver known to have been injured and to have been the driver of a "severely damaged," "wrecked" vehicle was not justified by the concern for that person's injuries, as the person had responded to the officer's inquiries made from without the home that he was all right. Lambert is silent as to whether, had the officer received no response, his warrantless entry would have been justified.
Here, however, we are faced with a fact situation that is an extension of Lambert. While the officers here received no response to their inquiries, there was
neither evidence of a severely damaged vehicle nor of an injured driver. At the outset, the investigating officers were armed only with the description of the driver as an "older" man who had fled the scene of the accident after stopping for a moment to look back at the point of collision with the motorcyclist. The victim provided no information supporting the belief that the driver was injured and in need of assistance. Added to this knowledge were the observations of the police at the defendant's home, namely, the car with the door ajar and the keys in the ignition and the inner door of the house open with the outer screen door shut on a July afternoon. Nothing from these facts could be reasonably said to provide a basis for believi
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