Arrest Warrant Good Enough To Authorize Cops To Enter Third Person's House to Make the Arrest

State v. deLottinville, Minn.S.Ct., 2/15/2017.  The cops went to an address with an arrest warrant for Ms. deLottinville.  That’s not where Ms. deLottinville lived.  When one of the officers saw Ms. deLottinville through a ground level patio door he immediately went in and arrested her.  Ms. deLottinville said that the arrest warrant wasn’t enough to authorize entry into a third person’s residence.  The trial court, the court of appeals, and now the supreme court disagreed.  Justice Lillehaug puts Minnesota into the camp that says that an arrest warrant is a “bad ass sword” that unlocks any and all doors.  Justice Chutich dissented, concerned that the cops will take this new authority to rely upon an arrest warrant to barge into any and everyone’s house in pursuit of the person named in the warrant.

Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980) says that a valid arrest warrant justifies entry into the home of the subject of the warrant. The Supreme Court, however, has never extended Payton, to permit entry into a third person's home in order to arrest the person named in the arrest warrant.  The Minnesota Supreme Court had previously mused that in that situation the officers may need a search warrant but it wasn't really the holding of the case. State v. Patricelli, 324 N.W.2d 351 (Minn. 1982).

The officer's testimony amazingly similar to that of another officer in an Eighth Circuit Opinion a long time back, United States v. Clifford, 664 F.2d 1090 (8th Cir. 1981).  In that case, officers went to a third person's residence with an arrest warrant for Clifford.  A cop swore he saw and recognized Clifford inside so he went in and arrested him.  The Eighth Circuit said that even assuming that Clifford had a legitimate expectation of privacy in a third person's home, the officer's knowledge of Clifford's presence inside the third person's home justified entry to execute the arrest warrant for Clifford.  Just swap out Clifford for deLottinville - which is exactly what the court of appeals did - and you're done:

[W]hen police have probable cause to believe that the subject of a valid arrest warrant is present as a visitor in the residence of another, police may enter that residence to effectuate the arrest under that warrant without violating the Fourth Amendment rights of the person named therein.