The 911 Hang-Up, the Shotgun, and the Morphine
At 11:40 p.m., Concord police receive a 911 call that connects and then disconnects from a second-floor apartment on North Main Street. Two officers arrive at 11:52. The building's outer door is propped open. They climb to the apartment door, which is closed, and knock and announce. No answer, but they hear a low moan and a thud. The leaseholder, Trevor, has a 2019 felony theft conviction, which one officer confirmed against the record system earlier that shift. The officers force the door. They find Trevor on the floor, pale and sweating, blood on the linoleum, and an unloaded pump shotgun leaning against the sofa three feet away. An officer moves the shotgun to the kitchen counter "for safety." Trevor is conscious but confused. Paramedics arrive. While Trevor is being treated, an officer walks into the bedroom, opens a closed closet door, and finds a box of 12-gauge shells and a notebook recording cash payments. Trevor is charged federally with being a felon in possession of a firearm. In the ambulance, an officer asks, "Whose gun is that?" Trevor answers, "It's mine, I keep it for the raccoons." He had just been given 4 mg of morphine.
1. Was the warrantless entry into the apartment lawful? Address both federal and New Hampshire constitutional standards.
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Yes, the entry itself was lawful, and the reasoning is narrow.
Federal baseline. A warrantless entry into a home is presumptively unreasonable, but the emergency-aid exception permits entry when officers have an objectively reasonable basis to believe a person inside is seriously injured or imminently threatened. The test is objective: would a reasonable officer, on these facts, believe immediate action was needed?
The facts that carry it. A 911 call that connects and disconnects, late at night; no response to knocking and announcing; a moan and a thud audible from inside. That combination is the textbook emergency-aid profile. Officers may also consider that a hang-up call is itself ambiguous-a pocket dial or a genuine emergency-which is why the audible moan matters.
New Hampshire overlay. Part I, Article 19 of the New Hampshire Constitution sometimes supplies greater protection than the Fourth Amendment, and the state Supreme Court has been willing to reject federal doctrine in search-and-seizure cases. But the emergency-aid principle is well established in New Hampshire and the facts here satisfy it; there is no basis to argue the state constitution demands a warrant to check on a possibly dying person.
The limit that matters. The authority is defined by the emergency, not by suspicion of crime. Once the medical need was addressed, the justification for the intrusion ended. Keep that distinction sharp-it decides the next question.
2. Trevor moves to suppress the shotgun. Does the plain-view doctrine or the protective rationale support admission?
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The shotgun should survive suppression, for reasons distinct from the closet evidence.
Plain view, element by element.
- Lawful vantage: the officers were lawfully inside under the emergency-aid exception, so their observation of the living room is not tainted.
- Incriminating character immediately apparent: this requires the officer to know facts making the item contraband or evidence. One officer had already confirmed Trevor's felony status that shift, so a shotgun in the residence of a convicted felon is immediately incriminating. Without that prior confirmation, the analysis would be much harder.
- Lawful right of access: the item was in the room where the officers were entitled to be.
The safety move. Relocating an unsecured firearm three feet away while rendering aid to a confused, bleeding man is a reasonable safety measure and does not convert the seizure into an unlawful search. Courts are reluctant to second-guess officers who secure weapons while treating a patient.
Do not overreach. The shotgun's admissibility does not validate what came after. The gun was in plain view in the room the officers lawfully occupied; the closet was not. Argue the two items separately and be prepared for the court to admit one and suppress the other-an outcome that is entirely ordinary.
3. Trevor also moves to suppress the shells, the notebook, and his ambulance statement. Evaluate each.
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The closet search: suppress. A protective sweep permits a cursory look in spaces where a person could be hiding, and only while the justifying emergency is ongoing. By the time the officer walked into the bedroom, Trevor was on the floor and paramedics were present; no facts suggest a hidden confederate. More importantly, an unloaded shotgun on the sofa does not suggest a second armed person. Opening a closed closet door goes beyond a sweep, and the shells and notebook were not in plain view-they required the door to be opened. Expect suppression of both.
The ambulance statement: likely suppress, but fight over two distinct theories.
- Miranda: was Trevor in custody? He was on a stretcher, medicated, and questioned by an officer. A court may or may not find custody in the Miranda sense; this is genuinely arguable and should be briefed both ways.
- Voluntariness: this is the stronger argument. Four milligrams of morphine, recent loss of consciousness, bleeding, and visible confusion make it difficult for the state to prove the statement was the product of a free and unconstrained choice. New Hampshire requires the state to prove voluntariness by a preponderance.
Fruit of the poisonous tree. If the statement falls, the gun should still survive under independent source-the officers saw and secured it before any question was asked. The notebook, by contrast, is tainted by the unlawful closet entry, and its suppression may undercut the distribution or trafficking theory the prosecution was building. Advise your client, and litigate each item on its own footing rather than arguing that all or nothing must fall.