SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Payton v. New York
445 U.S. 573 (1980)
MR. JUSTICE STEVENS delivered the opinion of the Court.
These appeals challenge the constitutionality of New York statutes that authorize police officers to enter a private residence without a warrant and with force, if necessary, to make a routine felony arrest.
We now reverse the New York Court of Appeals and hold that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment, Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643; Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, prohibits the police from making a warrantless and nonconsensual entry into a suspect’s home in order to make a routine felony arrest.
We first state the facts of both cases in some detail and put to one side certain related questions that are not presented by these records. We then explain why the New York statutes are not consistent with the Fourth Amendment and why the reasons for upholding warrantless arrests in a public place do not apply to warrantless invasions of the privacy of the home.
I.
On January 14, 1970, after two days of intensive investigation, New York detectives had assembled evidence sufficient to establish probable cause to believe that Theodore Payton had murdered the manager of a gas station tow days earlier. At about 7:30 a.m. on January 15 six officers went to Payton’s apartment in the Bronx intending to arrest him. They had not obtained a warrant. Although light and music emanated from the apartment, there was no response to their knock on the metal door. The summoned emergency assistance and, about 30 minutes later, used crowbars to break open the door and enter the apartment. No one was there. In plain view, however, was a 30 caliber shell casing that was seized and later admitted into evidence at Payton’s murder trial.
In due course Payton surrendered to the police, was indicted for murder, and moved to suppress the evidence taken from his apartment. The trial judge held that the warrantless and forcible entry was authorized by the New York Code of Criminal Procedure, and that the evidence in plain view was properly seized.
On March 14, 1974, Obie Riddick was arrested for the commission of two armed robberies that had occurred in 1971. He had been identified by the victims in June of 1973 and in January 1974 the police had learned his address. They did not obtain a warrant for his arrest. At about noon on March 14, a detective, accompanied by three other officers knocked on the door of the Queens house where Riddick was living. When his young son opened the door, they could see Riddick sitting in bed covered by a sheet. They entered the house and placed him under arrest. Before permitting him to dress, they opened a chest of drawers two feet from the bed in search of weapons and found narcotics and related paraphernalia. Riddick was subsequently indicted on narcotics charges. At a suppression hearing, the trial judge held that the warrantless entry into his home was authorized by the revised New York statute, and that the search of the immediate area was reasonable under Chimel v. California, 395 U.S. 753.
The New York Court of Appeals, in a single opinion, affirmed the convictions of both Payton and Riddick.
Because no arrest warrant was obtained in either of these cases, the judgments must be reversed and the cases remanded to the New York Court of Appeals for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concurring.
I joined the Court’s opinion in United States v. Watson, 423 U.S.411 (1976) upholding on probable cause, the warrantless arrest in a public place. I, of course, am still of the view that the decision in Watson is correct. The Court’s balancing of the competing governmental and individual interests properly occasioned that result. Where, however, the warrantless arrest is in the suspect’s home, that same balancing requires that, absent exigent circumstances, the result be the other way. The suspect’s interest in the sanctity of his home then outweighs the governmental interests.
I therefore join the Court’s opinion, firm in the conviction that the result in Watson and the result here, although opposite, are fully justified by history and by the Fourth Amendment.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE REHNQUIST join, dissenting.
The Court today holds that absent exigent circumstances officers may never enter a home during the daytime to arrest for a dangerous felony unless they have first obtained a warrant. This hard and fast rule, founded on erroneous assumptions concerning the intrusiveness of home arrest entries, finds little or no support in the common law or in the text and history of the Fourth Amendment. I respectfully dissent.
* * * *
