District of Columbia v. Wesby
Last updated
Last updated
583 U.S. 48, 138 S. Ct. 577 (2018)
Supreme Court of the United States
District of Columbia v. Theodore Wesby
Justice THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case involves a civil suit against the District of Columbia and five of its police officers, brought by 16 individuals who were arrested for holding a raucous, late-night party in a house they did not have permission to enter. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that there was no probable cause to arrest the partygoers, and that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity. We reverse on both grounds.
Around 1 a.m. on March 16, 2008, the District’s Metropolitan Police Department received a complaint about loud music and illegal activities at a house in Northeast D.C. The caller, a former neighborhood commissioner, told police that the house had been vacant for several months. When officers arrived at the scene, several neighbors confirmed that the house should have been empty. The officers approached the house and, consistent with the complaint, heard loud music playing inside.
After the officers knocked on the front door, they saw a man look out the window and then run upstairs. One of the partygoers opened the door, and the officers entered. They immediately observed that the inside of the house “‘was in disarray’” and looked like “‘a vacant property.’” The officers smelled marijuana and saw beer bottles and cups of liquor on the floor. In fact, the floor was so dirty that one of the partygoers refused to sit on it while being questioned. Although the house had working electricity and plumbing, it had no furniture downstairs other than a few padded metal chairs. The only other signs of habitation were blinds on the windows, food in the refrigerator, and toiletries in the bathroom.
In the living room, the officers found a makeshift strip club. Several women were wearing only bras and thongs, with cash tucked into their garter belts. The women were giving lap dances while other partygoers watched. Most of the onlookers were holding cash and cups of alcohol. After seeing the uniformed officers, many partygoers scattered into other parts of the house.
The officers found more debauchery upstairs. A naked woman and several men were in the bedroom. A bare mattress—the only one in the house—was on the floor, along with some lit candles and multiple open condom wrappers. A used condom was on the windowsill. The officers found one partygoer hiding in an upstairs closet, and another who had shut himself in the bathroom and refused to come out.
The officers found a total of 21 people in the house. After interviewing all 21, the officers did not get a clear or consistent story. Many partygoers said they were there for a bachelor party, but no one could identify the bachelor. Each of the partygoers claimed that someone had invited them to the house, but no one could say who. Two of the women working the party said that a woman named “Peaches” or “Tasty” was renting the house and had given them permission to be there. One of the women explained that the previous owner had recently passed away, and Peaches had just started renting the house from the grandson who inherited it. But the house had no boxes or moving supplies. She did not know Peaches’ real name. And Peaches was not there.
An officer asked the woman to call Peaches on her phone so he could talk to her. Peaches answered and explained that she had just left the party to go to the store. When the officer asked her to return, Peaches refused because she was afraid of being arrested. The sergeant supervising the investigation also spoke with Peaches. At first, Peaches claimed to be renting the house from the owner, who was fixing it up for her. She also said that she had given the attendees permission to have the party. When the sergeant again asked her who had given her permission to use the house, Peaches became evasive and hung up. The sergeant called her back, and she began yelling and insisting that she had permission before hanging up a second time. The officers eventually got Peaches on the phone again, and she admitted that she did not have permission to use the house.
The officers then contacted the owner. He told them that he had been trying to negotiate a lease with Peaches, but they had not reached an agreement. He confirmed that he had not given Peaches (or anyone else) permission to be in the house—let alone permission to use it for a bachelor party. At that point, the officers arrested the 21 partygoers for unlawful entry. The police transported the partygoers to the police station, where the lieutenant decided to charge them with disorderly conduct. The partygoers were released, and the charges were eventually dropped.
Respondents, 16 of the 21 partygoers, sued the District and five of the arresting officers. They sued the officers for false arrest under the Fourth Amendment. The partygoers’ claims were all “predicated upon the allegation that [they] were arrested without probable cause.”
On cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court awarded partial summary judgment to the partygoers. It concluded that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest the partygoers for unlawful entry.1 The officers were told that Peaches had invited the partygoers to the house, the District Court reasoned, and nothing the officers learned in their investigation suggested the partygoers “‘knew or should have known that [they were] entering against the [owner’s] will.’” The District Court also concluded that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity under § 1983. It noted that, under District case law, “probable cause to arrest for unlawful entry requires evidence that the alleged intruder knew or should have known, upon entry, that such entry was against the will of the owner.” And in its view, the officers had no such evidence.
With liability resolved, the case proceeded to trial on damages. The jury awarded the partygoers a total of $680,000 in compensatory damages. After the District Court awarded attorney’s fees, the total award was nearly $1 million.
On appeal, a divided panel of the D.C. Circuit affirmed. [T]he panel majority made Peaches’ invitation “central” to its determination that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest the partygoers for unlawful entry. The panel majority asserted that, “in the absence of any conflicting information, Peaches’ invitation vitiates the necessary element of [the partygoers’] intent to enter against the will of the lawful owner.” And the panel majority determined that “there is simply no evidence in the record that [the partygoers] had any reason to think the invitation was invalid.”
We granted certiorari to resolve [] whether the officers had probable cause to arrest the partygoers.
To determine whether an officer had probable cause for an arrest, “we examine the events leading up to the arrest, and then decide ‘whether these historical facts, viewed from the standpoint of an objectively reasonable police officer, amount to’ probable cause.” Because probable cause “deals with probabilities and depends on the totality of the circumstances,” it is “a fluid concept” that is “not readily, or even usefully, reduced to a neat set of legal rules.” It “requires only a probability or substantial chance of criminal activity, not an actual showing of such activity.” Probable cause “is not a high bar.”
There is no dispute that the partygoers entered the house against the will of the owner. Nonetheless, the partygoers contend that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest them because the officers had no reason to believe that they “knew or should have known” their “entry was unwanted.” We disagree. Considering the totality of the circumstances, the officers made an “entirely reasonable inference” that the partygoers were knowingly taking advantage of a vacant house as a venue for their late-night party.
Consider first the condition of the house. Multiple neighbors, including a former neighborhood official, informed the officers that the house had been vacant for several months. The house had no furniture, except for a few padded metal chairs and a bare mattress. The rest of the house was empty, save for some fixtures and large appliances. The house had a few signs of inhabitance—working electricity and plumbing, blinds on the windows, toiletries in the bathroom, and food in the refrigerator. But those facts are not necessarily inconsistent with the house being unoccupied. The owner could have paid the utilities and kept the blinds while he looked for a new tenant, and the partygoers could have brought the food and toiletries. Although one woman told the officers that Peaches had recently moved in, the officers had reason to doubt that was true. There were no boxes or other moving supplies in the house; nor were there other possessions, such as clothes in the closet, suggesting someone lived there.
In addition to the condition of the house, consider the partygoers’ conduct. The party was still going strong when the officers arrived after 1 a.m., with music so loud that it could be heard from outside. Upon entering the house, multiple officers smelled marijuana. The partygoers left beer bottles and cups of liquor on the floor, and they left the floor so dirty that one of them refused to sit on it. The living room had been converted into a makeshift strip club. Strippers in bras and thongs, with cash stuffed in their garter belts, were giving lap dances. Upstairs, the officers found a group of men with a single, naked woman on a bare mattress—the only bed in the house—along with multiple open condom wrappers and a used condom.
Taken together, the condition of the house and the conduct of the partygoers allowed the officers to make several “‘common-sense conclusions about human behavior.’” Most homeowners do not live in near-barren houses. And most homeowners do not invite people over to use their living room as a strip club, to have sex in their bedroom, to smoke marijuana inside, and to leave their floors filthy. The officers could thus infer that the partygoers knew their party was not authorized.
The partygoers’ reaction to the officers gave them further reason to believe that the partygoers knew they lacked permission to be in the house. Many scattered at the sight of the uniformed officers. Two hid themselves, one in a closet and the other in a bathroom. “[U]nprovoked flight upon noticing the police,” we have explained, “is certainly suggestive” of wrongdoing and can be treated as “suspicious behavior” that factors into the totality of the circumstances. In fact, “deliberately furtive actions and flight at the approach of … law officers are strong indicia of mens rea.” A reasonable officer could infer that the partygoers’ scattering and hiding was an indication that they knew they were not supposed to be there.
The partygoers’ answers to the officers’ questions also suggested their guilty state of mind. When the officers asked who had given them permission to be there, the partygoers gave vague and implausible responses. They could not say who had invited them. Only two people claimed that Peaches had invited them, and they were working the party instead of attending it. If Peaches was the hostess, it was odd that none of the partygoers mentioned her name. Additionally, some of the partygoers claimed the event was a bachelor party, but no one could identify the bachelor. The officers could have disbelieved them, since people normally do not throw a bachelor party without a bachelor. Based on the vagueness and implausibility of the partygoers’ stories, the officers could have reasonably inferred that they were lying and that their lies suggested a guilty mind.
The panel majority relied heavily on the fact that Peaches said she had invited the partygoers to the house. But when the officers spoke with Peaches, she was nervous, agitated, and evasive. After initially insisting that she had permission to use the house, she ultimately confessed that this was a lie—a fact that the owner confirmed. Peaches’ lying and evasive behavior gave the officers reason to discredit everything she had told them. For example, the officers could have inferred that Peaches lied to them when she said she had invited the others to the house, which was consistent with the fact that hardly anyone at the party knew her name. Or the officers could have inferred that Peaches told the partygoers (like she eventually told the police) that she was not actually renting the house, which was consistent with how the partygoers were treating it.
Viewing these circumstances as a whole, a reasonable officer could conclude that there was probable cause to believe the partygoers knew they did not have permission to be in the house.
In concluding otherwise, the panel majority engaged in an “excessively technical dissection” of the factors supporting probable cause. Indeed, the panel majority failed to follow two basic and well-established principles of law.
First, the panel majority viewed each fact “in isolation, rather than as a factor in the totality of the circumstances.” This was “mistaken in light of our precedents.” The “totality of the circumstances” requires courts to consider “the whole picture.” Our precedents recognize that the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts—especially when the parts are viewed in isolation. Instead of considering the facts as a whole, the panel majority took them one by one. For example, it dismissed the fact that the partygoers “scattered or hid when the police entered the house” because that fact was “not sufficient standing alone to create probable cause.” Similarly, it found “nothing in the record suggesting that the condition of the house, on its own, should have alerted the [partygoers] that they were unwelcome.” The totality-of-the-circumstances test “precludes this sort of divide-and-conquer analysis.”
Second, the panel majority mistakenly believed that it could dismiss outright any circumstances that were “susceptible of innocent explanation.” For example, the panel majority brushed aside the drinking and the lap dances as “consistent with” the partygoers’ explanation that they were having a bachelor party. And it similarly dismissed the condition of the house as “entirely consistent with” Peaches being a “new tenant.” But probable cause does not require officers to rule out [sic] a suspect’s innocent explanation for suspicious facts. As we have explained, “the relevant inquiry is not whether particular conduct is ‘innocent’ or ‘guilty,’ but the degree of suspicion that attaches to particular types of noncriminal acts.” Thus, the panel majority should have asked whether a reasonable officer could conclude—considering all of the surrounding circumstances, including the plausibility of the explanation itself—that there was a “substantial chance of criminal activity.”
For all of these reasons, we reverse the D.C. Circuit’s holding that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest. Accordingly, the District and its officers are entitled to summary judgment on all of the partygoers’ claims.
The judgment of the D.C. Circuit is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Justice GINSBURG, concurring in the judgment in part.
This case, well described in the opinion of the Court of Appeals, leads me to question whether this Court, in assessing probable cause, should continue to ignore why police in fact acted. No arrests of plaintiffs-respondents were made until Sergeant Suber so instructed. His instruction, when conveyed to the officers he superintended, was based on an error of law. Sergeant Suber believed that the absence of the premises owner’s consent, an uncontested fact in this case, sufficed to justify arrest of the partygoers for unlawful entry. An essential element of unlawful entry in the District of Columbia is that the defendant “knew or should have known that his entry was unwanted.” But under Sergeant Suber’s view of the law, what the arrestees knew or should have known was irrelevant. They could be arrested, as he comprehended the law, even if they believed their entry was invited by a lawful occupant.
Ultimately, plaintiffs-respondents were not booked for unlawful entry. Instead, they were charged at the police station with disorderly conduct. Yet no police officers at the site testified to having observed any activities warranting a disorderly conduct charge. Quite the opposite. The officers at the scene of the arrest uniformly testified that they had neither seen nor heard anything that would justify such a charge, and Sergeant Suber specifically advised his superiors that the charge was unwarranted.
The Court’s jurisprudence, I am concerned, sets the balance too heavily in favor of police unaccountability to the detriment of Fourth Amendment protection. A number of commentators have criticized the path we charted in Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806 (1996), and follow-on opinions, holding that “an arresting officer’s state of mind … is irrelevant to the existence of probable cause.” I would leave open, for reexamination in a future case, whether a police officer’s reason for acting, in at least some circumstances, should factor into the Fourth Amendment inquiry. Given the current state of the Court’s precedent, however, I agree that the disposition gained by plaintiffs-respondents [i.e., a ruling that officers violated their rights] was not warranted by “settled law.” The defendants-petitioners are therefore sheltered by qualified immunity.
Does the procedural posture of this case change your view on the outcome? This is not a criminal prosecution, in which the defendants are arguing about probable cause to get their charges dismissed. This is a lawsuit by the people at the party, alleging that police violated their clearly established constitutional rights when arresting them.
The standard for probable cause is not especially high. It’s nothing like proof beyond a reasonable doubt or even preponderance of the evidence. In addition to “probable cause,” the Court has used several cases to define “reasonable suspicion,” which is more than a mere hunch but requires less evidence than probable cause. Certain police conduct—most importantly “stop and frisk”—is permissible on the basis of reasonable suspicion even if officers lack probable cause. We will review reasonable suspicion at length when studying stop and frisk.
As the semester progresses, students should make a point of noting (1) which police tactics are permissible with no evidence or suspicion whatsoever (for example, investigatory tactics that are not “searches,” such as opening a bag of trash left out for collection), (2) which tactics may not be conducted with no suspicion but are allowed with “reasonable suspicion,” and (3) which police tactics require probable cause. Among those police tactics requiring probable cause, students should note which require warrants.
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