Lexington police set up a controlled buy of crack cocaine in the parking lot of an apartment complex. After the suspect walked into a breezeway with two apartments, officers lost visual contact and heard a door close. Smelling a strong odor of burnt marijuana coming from the left apartment, officers approached that door (though the suspect had likely entered the other unit). The officers banged loudly and announced, "Police!" Almost immediately, they heard movement inside—described as shuffling or people moving—which, in their experience, suggested evidence might be destroyed. Without obtaining a warrant, the officers forcibly entered the apartment. Inside, they found the respondent, Hollis King, and others, observed marijuana in plain view, and discovered additional contraband during a protective sweep. The actual drug-sale suspect was later found in the other apartment. The trial court denied King's motion to suppress, finding exigent circumstances. The Kentucky Supreme Court reversed, holding the exigency could not justify the entry because the police had created it by knocking and announcing in a way that made destruction of evidence reasonably foreseeable.
Under the Fourth Amendment, may police rely on the exigent circumstances exception to enter a home without a warrant when their preceding conduct (knocking and announcing at the door) foreseeably prompts occupants to destroy evidence, or is such an exigency considered impermissibly "police-created"?
The exigent circumstances exception permits warrantless entry when officers have probable cause and an objectively reasonable belief that evidence is being destroyed or another exigency exists. Police do not impermissibly create the exigency so long as they do not engage in or threaten to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment prior to the exigency. Tests that turn on officers' subjective intent, bad faith, or the reasonable foreseeability that their actions might prompt an exigency are improper. Occupants retain the right to refuse to open the door or to speak with officers during a lawful knock-and-talk.
Yes. The exigent circumstances rule applies so long as the police did not create the exigency by engaging or threatening to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment; merely knocking on a door and announcing their presence does not constitute such unlawful conduct. The Kentucky Supreme Court's contrary standard was rejected, and the case was reversed and remanded for further proceedings consistent with the Supreme Court's rule.
1) Exigent circumstances doctrine: The Court reiterated that a warrantless home entry is presumptively unreasonable, but recognized longstanding exceptions, including when officers reasonably believe evidence is being destroyed. The analysis is objective and focuses on what a reasonable officer would have believed at the time. 2) Police-created exigency: The Court rejected lower-court rules that suppressed evidence when officers acted in bad faith, when it was reasonably foreseeable their conduct would precipitate an exigency, or when they engaged in conduct that was lawful but designed to prompt an exigency. These tests, the Court explained, are inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment's objective reasonableness standard, are difficult to administer, and would unduly hamper legitimate police practices like knock-and-talk. 3) The governing test: The proper inquiry is whether the police engaged in or threatened conduct that violated the Fourth Amendment before the exigency arose. Lawful actions—such as approaching a residence, knocking on the door, and announcing "police"—do not by themselves render a subsequent exigency police-created. By contrast, an officer's demand for entry under color of authority without a warrant, or a threat to enter unlawfully, would constitute an actual or threatened Fourth Amendment violation and would bar reliance on exigency. 4) Application: The officers here had probable cause to believe a drug offense was occurring in the apartment (based in part on the strong odor of marijuana) and heard noises suggesting destruction of evidence after a lawful knock-and-announce. Because the officers did not demand entry or threaten an unlawful breach before the exigency arose, their conduct did not create the exigency within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. The Court remanded for the lower court to apply the correct standard to unresolved factual questions, including whether exigent circumstances in fact existed at the moment of entry. 5) Dissent: Justice Ginsburg warned that the majority's approach risks allowing officers to manufacture exigencies by knocking and announcing whenever they suspect drugs, thereby diluting the warrant requirement for homes. The majority responded that occupants remain free to refuse to open the door or to speak and that only an actual or threatened constitutional violation by police will defeat reliance on exigency.
Kentucky v. King is the leading modern statement of the police-created exigency doctrine. It establishes a bright-line, objective rule: warrantless entry under the exigent circumstances exception is permissible unless the police themselves created the exigency by engaging in or threatening to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment. The case legitimizes common knock-and-talk tactics while preserving core home-privacy protections by prohibiting reliance on exigency where officers overstep constitutional bounds before entry. For students, it provides a clean framework for suppression analyses in drug-destruction and other fast-moving scenarios and clarifies the irrelevance of officer intent or foreseeability to Fourth Amendment reasonableness.
Kentucky v. King reorients the police-created exigency doctrine toward an objective, constitutionally grounded test. By focusing on whether officers engaged in or threatened to engage in conduct that violates the Fourth Amendment before the exigency arose, the Court discarded foreseeability and subjective-intent approaches that had fractured lower courts and complicated routine police-citizen encounters at the home.