Jones v. City of North Las Vegas, 2025 WL 2586646 (9th Cir. 2025)
“When does a hot pursuit turn cold? Today we conclude that a pursuit is at best lukewarm, and certainly no longer hot pursuit, when officers lose a suspect’s trail in a residential neighborhood for eighteen minutes.” The opening lines of the court of appeals opinion tell us exactly where the pursuit ended. (Spoiler alert: In court.) Now let’s look at where it began. Read on and learn what turned a hot pursuit into something less.
Officers Joseph Minelli and Michael Rose of the North Las Vegas (Nevada) Police Department responded to a possible domestic battery at a house on a residential cul-de-sac. Officer Minelli approached the door and spoke to a woman in the house. Officer Rose went to the side of the house, where he saw someone go over the rear wall into a neighboring yard. Officer Rose ran back to his patrol car to call for more officers. He drove south, hoping to cut off and capture the fleeing person. Other officers arrived and helped Officer Rose establish a multiple-block perimeter around the area.
Officer Minelli stayed and spoke with the woman, who denied that there was any domestic violence. However, Officer Minelli saw several injuries around her eyes and a long cut across her chin that had been stitched. She told Officer Minelli that police were not welcome at her house and that her boyfriend — the likely suspect who fled — would be back later and police would need a warrant to enter the home.
Believing there was an effective perimeter in place, the officers called for a police service dog to help locate the fleeing suspect. The K9 handler broadcast announcements over a loudspeaker and sent an officer ahead of him to seek consent to enter neighbors’ back yards.
As the handler and his dog were searching, the dog alerted to odor in an adjoining yard, just over a six-foot block wall. An officer knocked on the neighbor’s (Jones) door, but no one answered. The handler looked over the wall and saw trash cans, where he thought the suspect might be hiding. He also saw a fenced-in kennel area with an open gate, three dog houses, feeding bowls, but he did not see any dogs.
The handler climbed over the wall. Then another officer lifted the police service dog over the wall to him. Just then, three dogs came out of their houses. The handler tried to hold the dogs back by kicking at them and moving the trash cans. When two of the dogs attacked his police service dog, the handler shot and killed them both.
The dogs’ owner, Genoa Jones, filed suit, alleging the officers unlawfully entered the backyard without consent or a warrant and unlawfully seized the dogs by killing them. The officers argued they were in hot pursuit of a domestic violence suspect (who was never located). The search for the suspect, they reasoned, created exigent circumstances to enter the walled yard. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of the officers. Jones appealed.
First, the court had no difficulty in finding the officers entered the curtilage of Jones’ walled backyard. As the court noted, “A small, enclosed yard adjacent to a home in a residential neighborhood is … ‘curtilage’ subject to Fourth Amendment protection” (United States v. Struckman, 603 F.3d 731, 739 (9th Cir. 2010), quoting United States v. Romero-Bustamente, 337 F.3d 1104, 1108 (9th Cir. 2003)).
The hot pursuit exception to the warrant requirement states that a suspect may not defeat a proper arrest simply by getting one or two steps ahead of pursuing police (United States v. Santana, 427 U.S. 38 (1976)). “Hot pursuit” implies an immediate pursuit of a suspect fleeing from officers. Courts recognize true hot pursuit as an exigent circumstance that may justify warrantless entry onto property. When facing a claim of hot pursuit as an exigent circumstance excusing the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement, the court first asks whether an officer had probable cause to search. Second, it asks whether genuine exigent circumstances justified the warrantless intrusion.
To qualify as hot pursuit, a chase “need not be reminiscent of the opening scene of a James Bond film.” (Lange v. California, 594 U.S. 295 (2021), Roberts concurrence). The court of appeals cited two factors to assess whether a pursuit is hot (or lukewarm). First, “whether, and to what degree, the officer lost track of the suspect’s whereabouts.” Second, “whether, after losing sight of a suspect, the officer continued to act with speed in attempting to apprehend the suspect.” Applying those two factors, the court noted Officer Rose last saw the suspect fleeing several houses from the location of the domestic violence call, and not into Jones’ yard. The court also cited the length of time from when the fleeing suspect was last seen: “Officers had seen neither hide nor hair of the suspect for at least eighteen minutes preceding their search, in which time the suspect’s movements through a suburban neighborhood were completely unknown.”
Thus, the court found there was no hot pursuit and no exigent circumstances. The warrantless entry into Jones’ yard was deemed unlawful. The court then turned to the use of force in seizing (killing) Jones’ dogs. It observed the handler had tried to check for dogs, making noise as he peered over the block wall. The court also noted that “the resident dogs were pit bulls, as opposed to a breed that may have been less sensitive to the intrusion or more readily controllable.” The court held that no clearly established law gave the officer notice that shooting the dogs in such a split-second circumstance violated the Fourth Amendment. The handler was entitled to qualified immunity on the use of force.
