They Can’t Arrest Me. I was in My Home.

Ordinarily, a person’s Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights against illegal searches and seizures applies to one’s home. The police are not permitted to enter a person’s home without a warrant. By extension, entering an unattached garage, in most instances, is considered part of the home and, once again a warrantless search and subsequent arrest is not permitted. By extension, any evidence obtained is subject to suppression.

This principle applies to DUI/OVI arrests. Normally, a police officer is not permitted to enter one’s home to arrest that person for this offense. Nor can the officer enter the garage for the same reason.

Of course there are exceptions to this rule. A recent Ohio case, State v. Lake, outlines one of those exceptions. In the case, the Defendant was observed violating several traffic laws and proceeded to drive his vehicle into his garage. The Defendant argued in his suppression motion that he was illegally arrested because he was in his garage at the time of the arrest and the police were not permitted to enter his garage without a warrant. The trial court overruled the Defendant’s motion and he was eventually found guilty. The Defendant appealed the court’s ruling stating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated by the police coming onto his property to effectuate his arrest.

The Seventh District Court of Appeals (Columbiana County) took exception to the Defendant’s argument. The Court held that the "hot pursuit" entry exception applied. They then stated that a defendant cannot defeat an arrest which has been set in motion in a public place by the escape to a private place, reiterating U.S. v. Watson, a 1976 U. S. Supreme Court case on point. In 2002, the Ohio Supreme Court extended this principle to misdemeanors, see Middletown v. Flinchum.

The court reasoned that since the officers observed at least two traffic violations, they had probable cause to stop the Defendant and pursue the Defendant into his “home” to effectuate an arrest.

So the next time you opine that a policeman can not arrest you when you are in your own home, you may want to think about the fact pattern cited in this post.