Like the Tenth Circuit, the Supreme Court at oral argument did not seem troubled by the consent-once-removed doctrine as it applies to undercover officers.  In addition, the Tenth Circuit held that qualified immunity did not protect the officers because they could not have reasonably believed that their entry satisfied one of the two recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement—consent and exigent circumstances.  It adopted a variation of the consent-once-removed doctrine, which it applied “when an undercover officer enters a house at the express invitation of someone with authority to consent, establishes probable cause, and then immediately summons other officers for assistance.† However, the Tenth Circuit refused to extend that principle to confidential informants. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed.  However, it dismissed the claim against the officers on qualified immunity grounds, finding that the officers could reasonably have believed that the consent-once-removed doctrine justified their actions. The federal district court in Utah questioned whether the Supreme Court would adopt such a rule, which had previously been recognized in only three circuits.  Under that doctrine, the consent that a homeowner gives to one individual when he invites the person inside his home is transferred to police officers whom the invitee summons into the home based on probable cause.  Unlike the state, the officers argued that their warrantless entry into the home was justified under the “consent-once-removed†doctrine.  Callahan then filed a civil claim against the officers under 42 U.S.C.  The Utah Court of Appeals reversed that decision and also rejected the state’s argument that the evidence was admissible under the “inevitable discovery†doctrine.  Based on the officers’ warrantless entry into his house, he challenged the evidence as inadmissible, but the trial court admitted the evidence, reasoning that the officers’ entry was justified under the exigent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement.  The officers arrested Callahan and two of his friends.Ĭallahan was charged in Utah state court with possession and distribution of methamphetamines.  Once they received the signal, the officers raided the home and found Callahan with the marked bill and methamphetamines.  The police directed the informant to complete the transaction and then give a signal to officers that the purchase had been completed.  The task force gave the informant a marked bill, wired him, and followed him to Callahan’s neighborhood.  A confidential informant identified Afton Callahan as a drug dealer in the area and arranged to purchase $100 worth of methamphetamine from him. To recap, Pearsonarose out of a drug buy/bust that was organized by a narcotics task force in central Utah. Callahan last week, the Supreme Court wrestled – as it has done often in recent years – with a potentially enormous expansion to the list of circumstances that justify an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. When it heard oral argument in Pearson v. Scott Street, an associate in Akin Gump’s LA office, offers the following commentary on the oral argument in Pearson v.
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