Case Story: Winning a Felon in Possession of a firearm Case

DISCLAIMER:

CASE RESULTS DEPEND ON A VARIETY OF FACTORS UNIQUE TO EACH CASE. CASE RESULTS DO NOT GUARANTEE OR PREDICT A SIMILAR RESULT IN ANY FUTURE CASE.

Let’s say your house is on fire.

You call 911 for help. What’s the job of the firefighters who arrive on scene?

Q: To put out the fire?
A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: To figure out how the fire started?
A: That makes sense too.

Q: What about to investigate things unrelated to the fire?
A: That feels less clear.

Like most legal issues, the question is where to draw the line.

The Fire investigation

Our client lived alone in a rural farmhouse. One evening, the structure caught fire with our client inside. When firefighters arrived, they went inside the home, put out the fire, and determined its origin. But their work didn’t end there. Instead, they walked through our client’s entire home.

During the walkthrough, they saw some guns and reported this to law enforcement. Importantly, they didn’t find the items anywhere near where the fire had been. Rather, they found them in places that had never been on fire, including the client’s bedroom and the upstairs.

Armed with this information, the cops got a warrant and searched our client’s home a few days later. Unsurprisingly, they found the items the firefighters had tipped them off to. The client was arrested and charged federally with illegal gun possession. When he explained how the cops found the guns in his home, it didn’t sit well with us.

So we challenged it.

The Legal Challenge

We challenged the search of the client’s home because firefighters shouldn’t act like cops.

If firefighters can act like cops, people will be less likely to call them for help, which isn’t good.

To understand the case, it’s important to explain some legal principles related to a person’s home. Normally, the government can’t just go into your home; they need a warrant first. But sometimes a warrant isn’t required, like when there’s an emergency inside, for example a fire.

And the logic makes sense. Firefighters shouldn’t have to stand outside a burning house waiting for a judge to allow them inside, because in the time that takes, the house would likely burn down. That’s obviously absurd, hence the exception.

The question, then, is what should firefighters be allowed to do once inside they’re inside a home?

We agreed that they could put out the fire. We also agreed that they could look around to determine the fire’s origin. But we disagreed with what they did after that. We argued that the moment the fire was out and its origin had been determined, the firefighters’ job was done. The emergency was over and their permission to be in the house without a warrant had expired. They thus should have left the house.

But they didn’t.

Instead, they kept looking around and eventually found the guns.

Since the firefighters no longer had permission to be in the house when they found the items, we argued their conduct was illegal. And according to the Fourth Amendment, when that happens, whatever was found can’t be used to convict our client of a crime.

The government argued we were being too technical and that firefighters should be able to look around a house after a fire is out for three reasons:

• To be safe

• To look for potential hot spots

• To make sure other parts of the house weren’t still on fire

Basically that when the firefighters found the guns they were still acting within the emergency exception to the warrant requirement and thus their conduct was legal.

The Decision

The judge sided with us.

And he drew the exact line we asked for — that it’s OK for firefighters to enter homes in cases of emergency without a warrant, but once the emergency is over, they must leave the house. To hold otherwise would give firefighters carte blanche to snoop around a person’s house as they please.

The case ultimately turned on where the illegal items were found by the firefighters.

Had they been in plain view in any part of the house on fire, that would have been fine. Similarly, had they been in plain view in the part of the house where the fire had started, that too would have been fine. But because they were found in neither place, there was no reason for the firefighters to be there, and so their presence was impermissible.

As the judge concluded: “This fire investigation turned into a criminal investigation.” And without a warrant, the criminal investigation was illegal, so the items found were suppressed.

The Takeaway

This case boils down to what we want our public servants to do.

We want firefighters to put out fires, not to investigate crimes. Because when the two mix, the risk is that people will no longer ask firefighters for help when they need them.

From a public policy standpoint, that’s a recipe for disaster.

We have firefighters for a reason. We have police officers for a reason. And if they both don’t stay in their respective lanes, they risk losing the trust of the community.

The judge didn’t want that, so he sided with us.