The New Jersey Police Chief Magazine | January 2024
Continued from previous page conducting harassment and stalking investigations , to look beyond merely relying on a complainant victim ’ s expression of fear , intimidation , or threat , and to establish tangible proof of the perpetrator ’ s criminal intent .
Cases where the Supreme Court denied review Aside from the Counterman case , there were no other Court opinions directly impacting police in the October 2022 term . This is rare since over the past few years the Court usually had a few cases dealing with Fourth Amendment issues , qualified immunity , or use of force .
What was more significant in my review were the cases in which the Court denied certiorari and let the lower court decisions stand . There were four such cases of note .
1 . Pennington v . West Virginia The first , Pennington v . West Virginia ( no . 22-747 ) was a petition to determine whether police entry into a home to look for a juvenile under a pick-up order , an equivalent to an arrest warrant for truancy , was sufficient to justify entry absent consent , exigent circumstances , or probable cause of wrongdoing . The 16-year-old truant was found in the house hiding behind a medicine cabinet . Her mother was charged with child concealment . The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the entry did not violate the U . S . Supreme Court holding in Payton v . New York , 445 U . S . 573 ( 1980 ) permitting an arrest warrant based on a reasonable belief a wanted individual would be found within a location . The case sought to clarify the federal circuit court split regarding the Payton language . Some circuits hold that reasonable belief equates to probable cause ( 2nd , 10th and D . C . Circuits ). The Supreme Court ’ s denial of certiorari leaves circuit court splits and existing state court interpretations in place .
2 . Lombardo v . City of St . Louis In the next case , Lombardo v . City of St . Louis ( No . 22-510 ) the Court revisited a case decided in 2021 and sent it back down to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals with instructions that a lower court ’ s review of the reasonableness of a use of force under the standard of Graham v . O ’ Connor cannot be applied mechanically ( see U . S . Supreme Court to review the Eighth Circuit ’ s decision on its second review . The Eighth Circuit , after reconsidering the Graham standards , again ruled in favor of the police and found the use of force was not per se unreasonable and the officers were entitled to qualified immunity . The U . S . Supreme Court denied review on June 20 , 2023 .
3 . Fox v . Campbell Fox v . Campbell ( No . 22-848 ), certiorari denied on October 2 , 2023 , involved consideration of Graham v . Connor standards and whether qualified immunity applied to police shots fired at an individual but missed . The issue was whether the use of force was excessive . The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the officers and affirmed the district court holding in an interlocutory appeal for summary judgment . ( See , Campbell v . Cheatham County Sheriff ’ s Department , et al ., 47 F . 4th 468 ( 6th Cir . 2022 ).)
The lower court denied in part the police officer ’ s summary judgment motion and left the excessive force claim for trial . The background facts are that sheriff ’ s deputies went to a home on a welfare check . Within 28 seconds of arrival a deputy fired two shots at the residence door as it was being opened by the resident who said he had a gun ( he did not ) and then six more shots at 31 seconds . The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court determination that the reasonableness of the deputy ’ s use of force under the circumstances was an issue of fact best left to a jury .
4 . Moore v . United States Lastly , in Moore v . United States ( no . 22-800 ), the issue in the petitioning defendant ’ s request for review was whether long-term police use of surveillance camera targeted at a person ’ s home and cartilage is a Fourth Amendment search .
The First Circuit held that under the circumstances and the Supreme Court ’ s prior holding in U . S . v . Carpenter , 138 S . Ct . 2006 ( 2018 ), the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment . The First Circuit cited a prior pole camera decision in United States v . Tuggle , 4 F . 4th 505 , 524 ( 7th Cir . 2021 ) to address the cartilage issue (“[ T ] he stationary cameras placed around [ the defendant ]’ s house captured an important sliver of [ his ] life , but they did not paint the type of exhaustive picture of his every movement that the Supreme Court has frowned upon .”). The U . S . Supreme Court denied certiorari when Tuggle came before it in 2022 ( Tuggle v . United States , 142 S . Ct . 1107 ( 2022 )) and , once again in Moore , left the lower circuit court decision in place .
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