SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Minnesota v. Olson

495 U.S. 91 (1990)

Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

The police in this case made a warrantless, nonconsensual entry into a house where Olson was an overnight guest and arrested him. The issue is whether the arrest violated Olson’s Fourth Amendment rights. We hold that it did.

I.

Shortly before 6 a.m. on Saturday, July 18, 1987, a lone gunman robbed an Amoco gasoline station in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and fatally shot the station manager. A police officer heard the police dispatcher report and suspected Joseph Ecker. The officer and his partner drove immediately to Ecker’s home, arriving at about the same time that an Oldsmobile arrived. The Oldsmobile took evasive action, spun out of control, and came to a stop. Two men fled the car on foot. Ecker, who was later identified as the gunman, was captured shortly thereafter inside his home. The second man escaped.

Inside the abandoned Oldsmobile, police found a sack of money and the murder weapon. They also found a title certificate with the name Rob Olson crossed out as a secured party, a letter addressed to a Roger R. Olson of 3151 Johnson Street, and a videotape rental receipt made out to Rob Olson and dated two days earlier. The police verified that a Robert Olson lived at 3151 Johnson Street.

The next morning, Sunday, July 19, a woman identifying herself as Dianna Murphy called the police and said that a man by the name of Rob drove the car in which the gas-station killer left the scene and that Rob was planning to leave town by bus. About noon, the same woman called again, gave her address and phone number, and said that a man named Rob had told a Maria and two other women, Louanne and Julie, that he was the driver in the Amoco robbery. The caller stated that Louanne was Julie’s mother and that the two women lived at 2406 Fillmore Northeast. The detective-in-charge who took the second phone call sent police officers to 2406 Fillmore to check out Louanne and Julie. When police arrived they determined that the dwelling was a duplex and that Louanne Bergstrom and her daughter Julie lived in the upper unit but were not home. Police spoke to Louanne’s mother, Helen Niederhoffer, who lived in the lower unit. She confirmed that a Rob Olson had been staying upstairs but was not then in the unit. She promised to call the police when Olson returned. At 2 p.m., a pickup order, or “probable cause arrest bulletin,” was issued for Olson’s arrest. The police were instructed to stay away from the duplex.

At approximately 2:45 p.m., Niederhoffer called police and said Olson had returned. The detective-in-charge instructed police officers to go to the house and surround it. He then telephoned Julie from headquarters and told her Rob should come out of the house. The detective heard a male voice say “tell them I left.” Julie stated that Rob had left, whereupon at 3 p.m. the detective Ordered the police to enter the house. Without seeking permission and with weapons drawn, the police entered the upper unit and found respondent hiding in a closet. Less than an hour after his arrest, respondent made an inculpatory statement at police headquarters.

The Hennepin County trial court held a hearing and denied respondent’s motion to suppress his statement. App. 3 – 13. The statement was admitted into evidence at Olson’s trial, and he was convicted on one count of first degree murder, three counts of armed robbery, and three counts of second degree assault. On appeal, the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed. 436 N.W.2d 92 (1989). The court ruled that respondent had a sufficient interest in the Bergstrom home to challenge the legality of his warrantless arrest there, that the arrest was illegal because there were no exigent circumstances to justify a warrantless entry and that respondent’s statement was tainted by that illegality and should have been suppressed. Because the admission of the statement was not harmless beyond reasonable doubt, the court reversed Olson’s conviction and remanded for a new trial.

We granted the State’s petition for certiorari, (citation omitted), and now affirm.

II.

It was held in Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980), that a suspect should not be arrested in his house without an arrest warrant, even though there is probable cause to arrest him. The purpose of the decision was not to protect the person of the suspect but to protect his home from entry in the absence of a magistrate’s finding of probable cause. In this case, the court below held that Olson’s warrantless arrest was illegal because he had a sufficient connection with the premises to be treated like a householder. The State challenges that conclusion.

[1] Since the decision in Katz v United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), it has been the law that “capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends … upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place.” Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128 (1978). A subjective expectation of privacy is legitimate if it is “‘one that society is prepared to recognize as “reasonable,”‘” id., at 143, quoting Katz, supra, at 361.

[2] The State argues that Olson’s relationship to the premises does not satisfy the 12 factors which in its view determine whether a dwelling is a “home.” Aside from the fact that it is based on the mistaken premise that a place must be one’s “home” in order for one to have a legitimate expectation of privacy there, the State’s proposed test is needlessly complex. We need go no further than to conclude, as we do, that Olson’s status as an overnight guest is alone enough to show that he had an expectation of privacy in the home that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable.

To hold that an overnight guest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s home merely recognizes the everyday expectations of privacy that we all share. Staying overnight in another’s home is a long-standing social custom that serves functions recognized as valuable by society. We stay in others’ homes when we travel to a strange city for business or pleasure, when we visit our parents, children, or more distant relatives out of town, when we are in between jobs or homes, or when we house-sit for a friend. We will all be hosts and we will all be guests many times in our lives. From either perspective, we think that society recognizes that a house guest has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his host’s home.

From the overnight guest’s perspective, he seeks shelter in another’s home precisely because it provides him with privacy, a place where he and his possessions will not be disturbed by anyone but his host and those his host allows inside. We are at our most vulnerable when we are asleep because we cannot monitor our own safety or the security of our belongings. It is for this reason that, although we may spend all day in public places when we cannot sleep in our own home we seek out another private place to sleep, whether it be a hotel room, or the home or a friend. Society expects at least as much privacy in these places as in a telephone booth – “a temporarily private place whose momentary occupants’ expectations of freedom from intrusion are recognized as reasonable,” Katz, 389 U.S., at 361.

III.

[3] In Payton v. New York, the Court had no occasion to “consider the sort of emergency or dangerous situation, described in our cases as ‘exigent circumstances,’ that would justify a warrantless entry into a home for the purpose of either arrest or search,” 445 U.S., at 583, 100 S.Ct., at 1378. This case requires us to determine whether the Minnesota Supreme Court was correct in holding that there were no exigent circumstances that justified the warrantless entry into the house to make the arrest.

The Minnesota Supreme Court applied essentially the correct standard in determining whether exigent circumstances existed. The court observed that “a warrantless intrusion may be justified by hot pursuit of a fleeing felon, or imminent destruction of evidence, Welsh [v. Wisconsin], 466 U.S. 740 [104 S.Ct. 2091, 80 L.Ed.2d 732] [(1984)], or the need to prevent a suspect’s escape, or the risk of danger to the police or to other persons inside or outside the swelling.” 436 N.W.2d, at 97. The court also apparently thought that in the absence of hot pursuit there must be at least probable cause to believe that one or more of the other factors justifying the entry were present and that in assessing the risk of danger, the gravity of the crime and likelihood that the suspect is armed should be considered. Applying this standard, the state court determined that exigent circumstances did not exist.

We are not inclined to disagree with this fact specific application of the proper legal standard. The court pointed out that although a grave crime was involved, respondent “was known not to be the murderer but thought to be the driver of the getaway car,” ibid., and that the police had already recovered the murder weapon, ibid. “The police knew that Louanne and Julie were with the suspect in the upstairs duplex with no suggestion of danger to them. Three or four Minneapolis police squads surrounded the house. The time was 3 p.m., Sunday… It was evident the suspect was going nowhere. If he came out of the house he would have been promptly apprehended.” Ibid. We do not disturb the state court’s judgment that these facts do not add up to exigent circumstances.

We therefore affirm the judgment of the Minnesota Supreme Court.

It is so ordered.