According to details, the exception originated from a 1973 case, Cady v. Dombrowski, in which an officer took a gun out of an impounded car without a warrant.
Since then, the principle has become “a catchall for a wide range of responsibilities that police officers must discharge aside from their criminal enforcement activities,” the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals stated in the Caniglia case.
Monday’s ruling, in the case Caniglia v. Strom, centered on whether that exception also justifies warrantless searches of homes. In a 9-0 ruling, the court decided that it does not.
“The very core of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee is the right of a person to retreat into his or her home and ‘there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion,’ ” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.
Back on August 20, 2015, Edward Caniglia and his wife had a nasty fight, so bitter that his wife decided to spend the night at a hotel.
The case involved a heated argument between a long-married couple, Edward and Kim Caniglia. He brought out a gun and told her to shoot him to put him out of his “misery.” Then after he left the house in a huff, she hid the gun and spent the night in a motel. The next morning, unable to reach her husband, she asked police to escort her home because she was afraid he might have harmed himself.
Furthermore, Thomas, writing for the unanimous court, noted that the “recognition that police officers perform many civic tasks in modern society was just that — a recognition that these tasks exist, and not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.”
“What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes,” he wrote.
“Today, the Court confirmed that the government cannot enter someone’s home without a warrant simply for the sake of convenience,” said Institute for Justice President Scott Bullock.
“In doing so, the Court reaffirmed that people’s property rights cannot be trumped by an extremely broad, vague concept of ‘community caretaking.’”