In District of Columbia v. Wesby, published January 22, 2018, the United States Supreme Court reversed a district court's decision on cross motions for summary judgment that the defendant police officers lacked probable cause to arrest multiple partygoers, and that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity. Responding to a neighbor's report that a party was taking place in a house the neighbor believed to be vacant, the police visited the location and spoke with neighbors who confirmed the house had been empty. The officers knocked on the door and entered. The house looked abandoned, with scant furniture and a filthy floor. There was a strip club and other debauchery taking place. The officers learned from the woman throwing the party that she did not have the owner's permission to use the house. Both she and the partygoers gave evasive responses about the party and permission. The officers arrested 21 partygoers for criminal tresspass. The charges were dropped. 16 partygoers sued for arrest without probable cause in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The district court and a divided court of appeals ruled that the officers did not have probable cause, because they did not have sufficient indication that the partygoers knowingly tresspassed; and that they were not entitled to qualified immunity.
The Supreme Court reversed. The majority held that the officers had probable cause to arrest the partygoers. The lower courts erred by looking at various factors on which the officers based probable cause in isolation, and rejecting each as a basis for probable cause. The courts should have considered the totality of the circumstances--the partygoers' evasive answers, the activity at the party, the setting, and common-sense conclusions about human behavior-- in determining whether the officers made a reasonable inference that the partygoers were knowingly taking advantage of a vacant house as a venue for their party.
The Supreme Court also exercised its discretion to review the qualified immunity decision. Officers are entitled to qualified immunity for a warrantless arrest unless a rule based on settled law--either controlling authority or a robust consensus of cases by persuasive authority-- resolves whether the circumstances with which the officer was confronted constituted probable cause. Given the imprecise nature of probable cause, officers will often find it difficult to know how the general probable cause standard applies in the precise situation encountered. A case therefore needs to be identified where an officer acting under similar circumstances was held to have violated the Fourth Amendment. Unless the case is the rare "obvious case" where the unlawfulness of the officer's conduct is sufficiently clear absent precedent, a body of relevant case law is necessary to clearly establish whether probable cause was present. Under these principles, the Supreme Court unanimously concluded that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity. Even if they lacked probable cause, they were entitled to qualified immunity for reasonably but mistakenly concluding that qualified immunity was present. No precedent found a Fourth Amendment violation under similar circumstances; and this was not an obvious case of violation. Further, the fact that a case is unususal is an important indication that the officer's conduct did not violate a clearly established right. A reasonable officer, looking at the entire legal landscape at the time of the arrests, could have interpreted the law as permitting these arrests. The officers were therefore entitled to summary judgment based on qualified immunity.
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