PAYTON v. NEW YORK, 445 U.S. 573, 100 S. Ct. 1371, 63 L. Ed. 2d 639
Held : The Fourth Amendment, made applicable to the States by the
Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits the police from making a warrantless and
nonconsensual entry into a suspect's home in order to make a routine felony arrest. Pp. 583-603.
(a) The physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the
wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed. To be arrested in the home
involves not only the invasion attendant to all arrests, but also an
invasion of the sanctity of the home, which is too substantial an invasion
to allow without a warrant, in the absence of exigent circumstances, even
when it is accomplished under statutory authority and when probable cause
is present. In terms that apply equally to seizures of property and to
seizures of persons, the Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the
entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not
reasonably be crossed without a warrant. Pp. 583-590.
(b) The reasons for upholding warrantless arrests in a public place, cf.
United States v. Watson, 423 U.S. 411, do not apply to warrantless
invasions of the privacy of the home. The common-law rule on warrantless
home arrests was not as clear as the rule on arrests in public places; the
weight of authority as it appeared to the Framers of the Fourth Amendment
was to the effect that a warrant was required for a home arrest, or at the
minimum that there were substantial risks in proceeding without one.
Although a majority of the States that have taken a position on the
question permit warrantless home arrest, even in the absence of exigent
circumstances, there is an obvious declining trend, and there is by no
means the kind of virtual unanimity on this question that was present in
United States v. Watson, supra, with regard to warrantless public arrests.
And, unlike the situation in Watson, no federal statutes have been cited to
indicate any congressional determination that warrantl ess entries into the
home are "reasonable." Pp. 590-601.
(c) For Fourth Amendment purposes, an arrest warrant founded on probable
cause implicitly carries with it the limited authority to enter a dwelling
in which the suspect lives when there is reason to believe the suspect is
within. Pp. 602-603.