A Federal Judge Says New Mexico Cops Reasonably Killed an Innocent Man at the Wrong House
Around 11:30 on a Wednesday night in April 2023, three police officers repeatedly knocked on the door of Robert Dotson's house at 5305 Valley View Avenue in Farmington, New Mexico. They were responding to a report of "a possible domestic violence situation," but they were in the wrong place: They were supposed to be at 5308 Valley View Avenue, which was on the opposite side of the street. When Dotson, a 52-year-old father of two, came to the door with a gun in his hand, the cops shot and killed him.
That response, a federal judge in New Mexico ruled last week, was reasonable in the circumstances and therefore did not violate Dotson's Fourth Amendment rights. The officers "reasonably believed that Dotson posed a severe risk of imminent harm" to them, U.S. District Judge Matthew Garcia writes in response to a federal civil rights lawsuit that Dotson's family filed in September 2023. Garcia rejected the plaintiffs' argument that the officers—Daniel Estrada, Dylan Goodluck, and Waylon Wasson—"recklessly created the need to apply deadly force by going to the wrong address."
Garcia concedes that the defendants' conduct prior to the shooting was "not a paragon of careful policework," which is quite an understatement. When the cops were dispatched to 5308 Valley View Avenue, he notes, Wasson "utilized his service vehicle's mobile data terminal" to "locate the address, incorrectly placing the [house] on the right (south) side of the street." Meanwhile, Goodluck, who was in a separate vehicle, "searched Google Maps to locate the property," and that search correctly located the house as "being situated on the left (north) side of Valley View Avenue."
When the officers arrived at the scene, Goodluck "continued to question whether [they] were headed to the correct residence," Garcia says, but "he deferred to Officer Wasson's seniority and said nothing." After Wasson knocked on the front door of Dotson's house three times without getting a response, Goodluck "finally voiced his concern that the Defendant officers went to the wrong address." Pointing across the street, he said, "It might have been 5308. Right there." Wasson was puzzled: "Is this not 5308? That's what it said right there, right?" No, Goodluck replied: "This is 5305, isn't it?"
Wasson then asked the dispatcher to confirm the correct address. After the dispatcher said "5308 Valley View Avenue," Wasson jokingly said, "Don't tell me I'm wrong, Dylan." By this point, the plaintiffs say, the cops "were realizing they were at the wrong residence and were laughing about it."
According to the lawsuit, Dotson and his wife, Kimberly, were upstairs in their bedroom when Wasson knocked on the front door. "The knock was not loud, and his announcement 'Farmington Police' could not be heard" on the second story, the complaint says. "The police vehicles were parked down the street and did not have their lights on." But the couple "believed that they heard a knock," so Dotson "put on his robe and went downstairs." For "personal protection," he "picked up the handgun which was kept on top of the refrigerator in the Dotson residence, not knowing what he might encounter at that late hour."
When Dotson "opened his front door," the lawsuit says, he "was blinded by police flashlights." At that point, "the police did not announce themselves," and Dotson "had no idea who was in his yard shining bright lights at him." According to the lawsuit, Wasson, upon seeing Dotson's gun, "opened fire instantly," and "the other officers, Estrada and Goodluck, immediately followed by firing their guns." Dotson was struck by 12 rounds.
Hearing the shots, Kimberly Dotson rushed downstairs and "saw her husband lying in his blood in the doorway," the lawsuit says. She "still did not know what had happened [or] that police officers were in her front yard." She "fired outside at whoever had shot her husband," and the officers "each fired at Mrs. Dotson—another 19 rounds. Fortunately, she was not hit."
At that point, according to the complaint, the officers "finally announced themselves, and Kimberly Dotson told them that someone had shot her husband and requested their help." She "did not realize even at that moment that the three police officers had killed her husband," which she did not learn "until she was finally told eight hours later at the police station where she was detained."
After the shooting, the lawsuit says, "the officers involved did not disclose to investigators that they were at the wrong address, which was the error leading to the tragic result and without which it would not have occurred." The mistake "was discovered by other officers who arrived at the scene."
Garcia offers a somewhat different account in his order dismissing the Fourth Amendment claims. Dotson "held a firearm in his right hand," the judge writes. "Without warning, Dotson placed both hands on his firearm and raised it in the direction of Officers Wasson and Estrada. The Defendant officers perceived Dotson to present an imminent threat to their safety."
Wasson "shouted to Dotson, 'Hey, hands up!'" Garcia says. "At the same time, Dotson raised his firearm parallel to the ground and pointed it in Officers Wasson and Estrada's direction. Officer Wasson fired his service weapon. Officers Estrada and Goodluck fired as well."
Garcia notes that "just two seconds elapsed from the moment Dotson opened his front door to the time the Defendant officers shot him." The officers therefore "had insufficient time to deescalate the encounter without risking their safety," he says.
By the same token, of course, Dotson had insufficient time to understand what was happening. The plaintiffs, Garcia notes, argued that Dotson "was likely blinded by a flashlight and had little reason to know that police were at his home and not some would-be assailant." Garcia dismisses that argument as "largely speculative," saying "there is nothing in the record to substantiate Plaintiffs' suggestion that Dotson was blinded and was unaware of who was knocking at his door." But it is hardly plausible to suppose that Dotson, who was at home with his wife and their two children, knew the men at his door were police officers but nevertheless threatened them with a gun.
In any case, Garcia says, what really matters is that Wasson et al. reasonably perceived Dotson as posing a potentially deadly threat. According to Garcia, the fact that Dotson would still be alive but for the officers' carelessness in going to the wrong house—a mistake that not only could have been recognized before Wasson knocked on the door but was in fact recognized by Goodluck—does not affect the Fourth Amendment analysis.
The officers "did not violate the Fourth Amendment by merely showing up at Dotson's home," Garcia writes. "And though the Defendant officers' error was the reason they ended up at the Dotsons' residence, that mistake was not the factor precipitating their use of force."
Garcia thus endorsed the position that the officers' lawyer, Luis Robles, took. "This case is undeniably tragic—not only for the Dotson family but also for the officers," Robles told CNN in 2023. "The officers didn't go to the Dotson house with any intention to use deadly force. But because Mr. Dotson pointed a gun at the officers, that gave them no other choice but to shoot him."
Garcia issued his decision on the same day that the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that assessing the use of deadly force requires consideration of more than "the moment of the threat." The justices said that narrow approach, which had been adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, was inconsistent with the principle that the constitutionality of deadly force depends on "the totality of the circumstances." But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, which includes New Mexico, had already said that analysis requires considering whether "reckless or deliberate conduct during the seizure unreasonably created the need to use such force."
In Garcia's view, the late-night visit at the wrong house that resulted in Dotson's death did not amount to such recklessness. He is not alone in concluding that police cannot reasonably be expected to make sure they are in the right place when they approach or even break into someone's home. But despite Garcia's ruling, Dotson's family can still pursue claims under the state constitution and the New Mexico Tort Claims Act.
The post A Federal Judge Says New Mexico Cops Reasonably Killed an Innocent Man at the Wrong House appeared first on Reason.com.
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Case appealed his conviction by arguing that the officers' entry of his home was unlawful. The Fourth Amendment forbids 'unreasonable searches and seizures' by law enforcement. That protection is strongest in a person's home. Accordingly, cops generally can't enter or search a home without either the owner's permission or a judicial warrant. Case sought to exclude any evidence obtained during the unlawful search—in effect, the entire incident—from trial. Over the years, courts have put forward numerous exceptions to the Fourth Amendment's requirements. The state of Montana in this instance countered that the officers' actions were reasonable and justified based on the 'community caretaker' doctrine, an exception first articulated by the Supreme Court in the 1973 case Cady v. Dombrowski. In Cady, the court sided with a Wisconsin police officer who had conducted a warrantless search of a driver's impounded vehicle after arresting him for drunk driving to search for a potential handgun. (The driver had identified himself as a Chicago cop.) During the search, the officer found bloodstained clothes and items that eventually led to the driver's prosecution of and conviction for first-degree murder. The driver appealed his conviction by arguing in part that the evidence obtained from the warrantless search had to be thrown out. The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding that the search was not an 'unreasonable' search or seizure because it was done for legitimate noncriminal reasons. The justices noted that local police officers frequently interact with drivers without criminal suspicion because states closely regulate cars and driving in general. For example, the court observed, officers will 'frequently investigate vehicle accidents in which there is no claim of criminal liability and engage in what, for want of a better term, may be described as community caretaking functions.' Expanding the community-caretaking doctrine beyond Cady's bounds, however, is more controversial. Cars and other motor vehicles, which did not exist when the Fourth Amendment was drafted in 1791, generally receive less protection from warrantless searches under the court's precedents than, say, a residence. For that exact reason, the court recently declined to extend the doctrine to a person's home. In the 2021 case Caniglia v. Strom, a man sued police officers who had entered his home as part of a wellness check after he allegedly placed a handgun on a table and told his wife to 'shoot [him] now and get it over with' during an argument. The officers invoked the community-caretaker doctrine, and the First Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for a unanimous court, held that the appeals court's decision went too far. 'Neither the holding nor logic of Cady justified that approach,' he wrote. 'True, Cady also involved a warrantless search for a firearm. But the location of that search was an impounded vehicle—not a home—'a constitutional difference' that the opinion repeatedly stressed. In fact, Cady expressly contrasted its treatment of a vehicle already under police control with a search of a car 'parked adjacent to the dwelling place of the owner.'' If the court already ruled in Caniglia that the doctrine did not apply to a person's home, you might ask, why is the court hearing this case at all? For one thing, the Montana Supreme Court sided with the state by adopting an unusual reading of the court's 2021 ruling. Thomas's four-page majority opinion was fairly straightforward: 'What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes,' he concluded, and he appeared to foreclose the community-caretaking doctrine for the latter altogether. While the court's decision in Caniglia was unanimous, however, there appeared to be significant differences lurking beneath the surface. Three of the justices wrote concurring opinions that appeared designed to narrow Thomas's conclusion. 'A warrant to enter a home is not required, we explained, when there is a 'need to assist persons who are seriously injured or threatened with such injury,'' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, quoting from precedent, and said that he joined Thomas's opinion insofar as it did not say otherwise. Justice Samuel Alito wrote that he joined Thomas's opinion because it 'properly rejects the broad 'community caretaking' theory' adopted by the First Circuit. At the same time, he wrote in favor of an expansive form of the doctrine in other circumstances, pointing to the possibility of elderly Americans whose relatives could not contact them and other hypotheticals not covered by the court's precedents. Finally, Justice Brett Kavanaugh went further than his colleagues to explicitly conclude that the Fourth Amendment did not prevent a wide range of warrantless entrances into a person's home, such as an imminent death by suicide, welfare checks on the elderly, or 'unattended young children' alone inside a home. 'To be sure, courts, police departments, and police officers alike must take care that officers' actions in those kinds of cases are reasonable under the circumstances,' he helpfully added. Concurring opinions carry no actual legal weight; Thomas's opinion is the one that actually represents the decision of the high court. Nonetheless, the Montana Supreme Court quoted extensively from the concurring opinions to describe Caniglia as a case where the high court 'articulated its concern that permitting warrantless entries broadly under the community caretaker doctrine risks encompassing actions that violate citizens' Fourth Amendment rights.' Three justices on Montana's Supreme Court dissented from the ruling, writing that Caniglia had actually held that the doctrine was 'not a standalone exception to the warrant requirement and did not permit warrantless entries into personal residences.' In his request for the Supreme Court to take up the case, Case urged the justices to decide whether officers must have probable cause before entering a home in an emergency-aid situation, as multiple lower courts have held, or whether some lower standard applied. 'By applying a relaxed standard, the [Montana Supreme Court] majority here upheld a warrantless entry even though the officers only had reasonable grounds to believe—and only purported to believe—that Case wanted to engage them in gunplay so they would kill him,' Case's lawyers told the court. That would not amount to probable cause, they argued, because the only threat to Case's life would be if the officers entered the house in the first place. It is unsurprising that the justices took up that question since courts across the country have reached different conclusions on it. While the state of Montana disagreed that the circuit split was as deep as Case claimed, it acknowledged that the justices could still provide some helpful clarity if they so desired. 'No doubt the use of different formulations—probable cause, objectively reasonable basis, reasonable suspicion—to analyze warrantless entries for Fourth Amendment 'reasonableness' runs the risk of sowing deeper confusion among federal and state courts on an issue of vital importance to citizens and law enforcement,' it told the justices in its reply brief. There are few spheres of life where the Fourth Amendment's protections are as high as a person's home. There are also situations where Americans may want emergency responders to enter a home as quickly as possible to preserve life and limb. If the diverging opinions in Caniglia are any indication, the justices will face a formidable task in laying out a comprehensive rule on the matter next term.
