holding that officers were qualifiedly immune where making a doorway arrest where they had an arrest warrant
How later courts described this case
- holding that officers were qualifiedly immune where making a doorway arrest where they had an arrest warrant
- stating that the question of whether a Fourth Amendment violation occurred is "a point we do not decide”
- extending Santana and holding that officers who follow a suspect for whom they have an arrest warrant into a home after he answers the door are qualifiedly immune
- "One would think that a [constitutionally protected] right cannot possibly be 'clearly established' from the point of view of the [defendants] when a total of seven judges, including the district court, the appellate panel, and finally the en banc First Circuit court, are themselves in disagreement as to the precise scope of that right."
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
LYNCH, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
While I am sympathetic to the very strong arguments that the police violated the Fourth Amendment, I join the per curiam. That the judges of this court so strongly disagree about whether there was a Fourth Amendment violation means that the law in this area is not so clearly established as to make the officers’ actions objectively unreasonable. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635 , 107 S.Ct. 3034 , 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987); St. Hilaire v. City of Laconia, 71 F.3d 20 (1995). The officers are entitled to immunity, given the state of the law in 1989.
Dissent follows.