Sixth Circuit Says 911 Call Justifies Police Entry Into House

Sixth Circuit Says 911 Call Justifies Police Entry Into House

Thursday, January 31, 2013 - by Lee Davis

Lee Davis

In Stricker v. Township of Cambridge the Sixth Circuit issued a ruling concerning police and their ability to enter a private residence. The case began when members of the Stricker family placed an emergency call to 911 to ask for help for their son who appeared to be overdosing. The 911 operator asked what substance the son had consumed but the mother, Susan Stricker, said she did not know.

Paramedics arrived soon after the call was placed but followed their stated policy of not entering a house until the police had arrived to secure the scene. A police office who heard the house involved in the call radioed the police dispatcher to let the department know he had previously been to the same address and made several arrests for occupants of the home who were heroin addicts.

When the police finally arrived, the Stricker family told them to leave their property. EMS and the police at the scene pressed the family to allow them inside to treat the ill son, the family insisted that the police had to go but the EMS were allowed to stay.

The brief appearance of the ill son in the front window, unsteady and obviously in distress, as well as a consultation with an assistant district attorney, was all the officers on the scene needed to force their way inside the house. The parents were handcuffed and the son was treated by EMS. The son was later found to have taken Xanax and heroin and required hospitalization.

While the police were securing the home they did a standard security sweep and uncovered some illegal substances. The parents were ultimately charged with resisting an officer and the son was arrested for substance abuse. The family then filed a suit against the police department, claiming that the officers who pushed their way into the house broke the law by engaging in an unreasonable search and seizure. They further claimed the officers used excessive force and that the district attorney’s office was working in conjunction with the police in a conspiracy to violate the Fourth Amendment.

The Sixth Circuit appeared not to hold much concern for the arguments of the Stricker family. The panel found that 911 calls represent a textbook example of an exigent circumstance. Such emergency situations are prime examples of when it can be necessary for police officers to enter a home without a warrant. The Sixth Circuit said even hang-up calls to 911 could be justification for such police entries. The 911 call, the previous police interaction with residents of the house and the brief encounter with the ill son in the window all served as sufficient justification for police action given that it was reasonable to assume the man needed immediately medical attention.

The Court went on to call the search of the house justifiable, though a close issue. The panel wrote that because the mother was unable to explain what substance her son had ingested the police were justified in searching for more information to help treat the son.


To read the full opinion, click here.

Signal Mountain Pie Run 10K Road Race Benefits Mountain Education Fund

Signal Mountain Pie Run 10K Road Race Benefits Mountain Education Fund

Saturday, February 02, 2013

From left are Lee Davis, Dr. Doug Torrance and Mike Taylor

Officials of the Signal Mountain Pie Run 10K road race presented a check for $2,000 to the Mountain Education Fund (MEF) this week benefiting area schools.

Accepting the check on behalf of MEF was Mike Taylor.

Sponsors of the race and presenting the check were Doug Torrance, DDS, Bill Minehan, Adtech Ceramics, and Lee Davis, of Davis & Hoss.

The Signal Mountain Road Race is one of the oldest races in Chattanooga, more than 30 years running. The Chattanooga Track Club hosts the race with the finical support of these sponsors.

Race Director Lee Davis said, "I am proud to say that 100 percent of the race proceeds goes directly to the Mountain Education Fund and in our small way we are supporting activities and services at area schools. Doug, Bill and I have decided to partner with the Mountain Education Fund as our charity of choice for all future races while we are the supporting sponsors. We believe in their mission."

Disability Law Town Hall Discussion a Success

Last Friday, the ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities sponsored a Town Hall Discussion on “Advocating for Equality in the Next Generation – Disability Rights” at Vanderbilt Law School.  Davis & Hoss Attorney, Stevie Phillips, is the YLD Liaison to the Section of IR&R and has assisted with this series of "Advocating for Equality" minority-rights forums at law schools across the country.  

Paula Pearlman, the executive director of the Disability Rights Legal Center in Los Angeles, was the keynote speaker at Vanderbilt.  Her comments and the discussion that followed examined how experiences with discrimination and definitions of equality have changed for the new generation of lawyers, law students, and others who have grown up in a multi-cultural, social media-driven society. 

The purpose of the meeting was to encourage dialogue among law students, young lawyers, experienced members of the bar, and others in the community about how the legal profession should work to address issues of inequality, intolerance, and discrimination in the profession and in society.

The next Advocating for Equality town hall discussion will be held at the ABA Mid-Year Meeting in Dallas this Thursday, February 7 from 4 pm to 6 pm at the Hilton Anatole.  

Murder charges dismissed against Davis & Hoss client in 2009 shooting in Chattanooga

published Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012

by Todd South

• 

A prosecutor has dropped murder charges against a 21-year-old man for a 2009 shooting the defendant has contended was self-defense.

Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman accepted the dismissal and a guilty plea on a separate drug related charge for Edward Jackson III. Jackson was first charged with first-degree murder, later downgraded to second-degree murder in the shooting death of Antonio Green, 28, at a park near Amnicola Highway.

Jackson had been free on bond awaiting trial before being arrested on a marijuana for resale charge in May. He must serve another two months on that charge before being released.

Witnesses said that on Nov. 5, 2009, Green approached Jackson, who was seated in a vehicle. The pair argued, Green punched Jackson, dragged him out of the car and began kicking him.

Jackson told police he saw a handgun on the ground nearby, grabbed it and shot Green in self-defense.

Bryan Hoss, Jackson’s attorney, credited prosecutor Lance Pope for seeing the case as self-defense and dropping the charges.

For more see tomorrow’s Times Free Press

Evidence at issue in 2006 Sierra Carpenter child death case

by Todd South

In this 2011 file photo, Traci Carpenter looks up at her defense attorney, Lee Davis, during her pretrial hearing on charges of aggravated child neglect in the death of her daughter, Sierra.

Photo by Alex Washburn /Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Six years ago emergency workers carried a gasping 18-month-old girl covered in bruises into an ambulance, trying to save her life.

Two days later, Sierra Carpenter died.

Police believe that only two people could have caused the bleeding in her brain and in her eyes, the deep bruising in the recesses of her ears — the fatal injuries that led doctors to take her off life support.

One of those people — her mother's boyfriend — was acquitted by a jury. And there is some doubt whether the other —Sierra's mother — ever will face trial.

At least four trial dates for Traci Carpenter have come and gone. She faces more than two decades in prison if convicted of aggravated child neglect, the charge lodged against her.

But if Tennessee's highest court agrees with Carpenter's lawyer, prosecutors may lack enough evidence to win a conviction and could be forced to drop the case.

Last week the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals denied her attorney's request that it review the charges against her before she stands trial.

Now attorney Lee Davis says he will ask the Tennessee Supreme Court for a rare pretrial ruling on what he sees as changes in admissible evidence in child neglect cases.

Davis argues that a state Supreme Court decision in a similar case earlier this year now prevents prosecutors from showing a jury any evidence of prior abuse.

Sierra's death tore the Carpenter family apart, putting relatives on the witness stand before television cameras to talk about the woman's mothering. More than one said Carpenter -- whether or not she hurt Sierra -- did put the child at risk for abuse.

Carpenter has remarried and had another child, a girl now almost 9 months old.

Davis contends that prosecutors want to blame Sierra's death on Carpenter because they failed to win a conviction against her then-boyfriend, Brian Rutherford.

Prosecutors maintained all along that even if Rutherford had been convicted, Carpenter knew that Sierra was being hurt and did nothing to stop it.

•••

Carpenter's case shows some of the difficulties prosecutors face in proving guilt when children die of abuse, and the challenge defense attorneys face in keeping the focus on the law and not letting emotion take over.

Testimony in Rutherford's trial centered on the autopsy finding that bleeding in Sierra's brain could have been weeks or months old.

In hearings leading up to Carpenter's potential trial, prosecutors have worked to demonstrate a "pattern of abuse" they believe the mother should have stopped.

Davis has fought to keep much of that evidence from the jury, writing that it would prejudice them against his client when the indictment deals only with the few days leading up to Sierra's death.

Carpenter's mother, Sue Petty, testified that she cared for the toddler for two days before dropping her off with Carpenter and Rutherford. She said the girl then had a single bruise on her forehead.

•••

Two days after Sierra's April 27, 2006, death, investigators named Rutherford and Carpenter as "persons of interest." They asked Carpenter to take a polygraph test over Sierra's abuse. She passed.

Nearly a year later the pair were charged: Rutherford with murder and a sentence of life with the possibility of parole, Carpenter with neglect and up to 25 years in prison.

When Rutherford went to trial in November 2008, his defense team heaped all the blame on Carpenter.

"It's important to punish the right person, isn't it?" defense attorney Myrlene Marsa asked the jury during opening statements. "The issue is about who did it."

The defense called witnesses who testified that the teen mother mistreated the toddler, jerking her around, thumping her on the head. Other witnesses said they couldn't believe Carpenter would hurt her child, but they blamed her for leaving the girl in Rutherford's care.

When Carpenter testified, she admitted she would drive Sierra around in a car while high on methamphetamine and marijuana.

She told the jury she had done many things she wasn't proud of but had never harmed her daughter.

At the end of a two-week trial, the jury took less than an hour to acquit Rutherford.

Then prosecutors began preparing for Carpenter's trial.

Davis objected and filed documents saying so. He had expected that since his client had cooperated, testified against Rutherford for the prosecution and opened herself up for such deep public scrutiny, that the charge against her could be dismissed.

It wasn't.

•••

In the years since, Davis has battled to obtain what he considers a fair trial for his client.

He has sought to limit photographs, recorded interviews and certain experts' testimony from reaching a potential jury.

Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole has considered each motion, balancing the efforts by Davis and prosecutor Neal Pinkston, who has taken over the effort to convict Carpenter.

University of Tennessee law professor Dwight Aarons, who specializes in criminal law, said the work in the Carpenter case is typical of an aggressive defense attorney and an equally committed prosecutor attempting to build their best cases through evidence.

The riskiest outcomes occur when a case gets before a jury, he said.

"Unless you have somebody at the scene who says this is what happened, then you're just left to infer from [evidence]," Aarons said. "Those are just guesses; they're educated guesses, but just guesses at what happened."

That's what makes pretrial work so crucial.

"Most trials are won or lost before the first juror is sworn in," Aarons said. "To some extent, to have a trial is a failure."