Update 2: Two more bloggers writing about the case.
Update: This case was selected by blogger Robert Loblaw as his Decision of the Day for yesterday.
This story has come up a couple of times before. According to an article by Steve Lash in the Maryland Daily Record,
Citing recent killing rampages in the United States, a federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a Maryland firefighter’s claim that Gaithersburg police unreasonably searched his home and took his collection of 41 guns and ammunition after responding to a report that he was armed, suicidal and could be a threat to his co-workers.
In a 3-0 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the police were justified in conducting the warrantless search and seizure in an era of unprecedented domestic carnage at schools, workplaces and shopping malls.
“Police, then, simply must be entitled to take effective preventive action when evidence surfaces of an individual who intends slaughter,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the panel. “Respecting the rights of individuals has never required running a risk of mass death.”
In the 20-page opinion [the preceding link is to the 4th Circuit’s website; I’ve also made a copy on my server here] on case 06-2158, Circuit Judge Wilkinson writes:
At Columbine High School in Littleton, in Blacksburg, Omaha, and Oklahoma City, America has had to learn how many victims the violence of just one or two outcasts can claim. These new predators are not terrorists in the ordinary sense; they are not linked to foreign powers or international organizations hostile to the United States. They are often isolated but heavily armed, filled to the brim with rage and anguish, and bent not just on murder, but on indiscriminate slaughter followed, frequently, by suicide. Violent derangement is nothing new, of course, but the atrocities seem to be growing at once more shocking and more commonplace.
This case presents the question of what emergency preventive action police may take, consistent with the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, when they learn of an individual who may well intend a similar slaughter, but who has neither committed nor attempted any crime. The legal issues are somewhat novel, and so we proceed with two values in mind: the need to prevent massacres whose human costs are beyond comprehension, and the need to preserve civil liberty for those who may be angry and depressed but not ultimately violent, and who cannot under our constitutional traditions be treated like criminals when they have committed no crime.
Also from the opinion, the story of how the Police obtained the weapons:
At 1:02 P.M. on July 23, 2002, Maryland police received a call from a healthcare hotline operator. The operator said that she had just spoken to Anthony Mora, a local firefighter, who told her he was suicidal, had weapons in his apartment, could understand shooting people at work, and said, “I might as well die at work.” By 1:03, multiple units were en route to Mora’s apartment. By 1:04, police had called one of Mora’s co-workers, who confirmed that Mora’s threats should be taken seriously; at some point, police also learned that Mora’s girlfriend had recently ended her relationship with him. Police arrived to find Mora in the parking lot loading suitcases and gym bags into a van, and they approached with guns drawn. By 1:13, Mora was handcuffed and on the ground. No warrant had been sought.
At that point, police and Mora began talking, and police began searching — whether with consent or without is disputed. Police first searched Mora’s luggage and van, finding one .32-caliber handgun round in a suitcase. Next, taking Mora’s keys, they entered his apartment, where they found a large gun safe in the kitchen and every interior door (including bathroom and closets) locked. Mora relinquished the combination under pressure, and inside police discovered twelve handguns, eight rifles, one shotgun, and keys to a second safe. Opening the interior doors, the second safe, and a locked file cabinet, police found guns, ammunition, gun accessories, and what police called “survival literature” in every room but the bathroom.
At that point, two officers drove Mora to a hospital to see a psychiatrist. See Md. Code Ann., Health-General § 10-622(a) (LexisNexis 2005) (authorizing involuntary emergency psychiatric evaluation if an individual has a mental disorder and presents a threat to his own safety or that of others). The other officers re-entered the apartment to seize Mora’s weapons. All told, they removed forty-one firearms — some apparently automatic, semi-automatic, or assault-style, and some loaded — as well as five-thousand rounds of ammunition, various accessories, and survivalist publications. The Gaithersburg police department took that property into custody. Again, no warrant had been sought.
We do not precisely know what the psychiatrist who saw Mora that day concluded, but Mora was not involuntarily committed, though he voluntarily admitted himself and stayed at the hospital for several days. There were also no criminal charges brought against him based on the day’s events, then or at any other time. After his stay in the hospital, Mora returned home, where he discovered that his firearms and associated property were missing. Over the next few months, he moved to Pennsylvania. Meantime, the Gaithersburg police completed their investigation (which showed that Mora was a licensed gun collector and did not have a disqualifying criminal conviction) and closed the case administratively, storing the seized property in their evidence room.
In 2003, through counsel, Mora inquired about getting his property returned…
and in closing:
We have reviewed Mora’s other federal claims and conclude they are without merit. As to all of Mora’s federal claims, then, we affirm the dismissal with prejudice. To hold otherwise would be to cross the line between vindicating personal rights and punishing public officials for nothing more than doing their jobs. As to Mora’s state claims, we modify the district court’s judgment, dismissing without prejudice to Mora’s ability to raise those state law claims in state court.
AFFIRMED AS MODIFIED