Medical Emergency (Exigent Circumstances):
Police officers, responding to a report of a disturbance, encountered a tumultuous situation in defendant's house, with signs of a blood on a car outside and violent behavior inside. They saw defendant screaming and throwing things and they saw that defendant had a cut on his hand. It was objectively reasonable for them to have believed defendant's projectiles might have a human target, or that defendant would hurt himself in his rage. It was plain that the officer's entry was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. They did not need ironclad proof of "a likely serious, life-threatening" injury to invoke the emergency aid exception. The test was whether there was an objectively reasonable basis for believing that medical assistance was needed, or persons were in danger. The state court of appeals erred in replacing that objective inquiry into appearances with its hindsight determination that there was in fact no emergency. It sufficed to invoke the emergency aid exception based on a reasonable belief that defendant had hurt himself (albeit nonfatally) and needed treatment that in his rage he was unable to provide, or that he was about to hurt, or had already hurt, someone else. Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45 (2009).
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