
Reeves waited for backup, then kicked in Cilman’s door and arrested him for being drunk in public and evasion without force — not driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI). Prosecutors later dropped those charges. The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed that kicking in Cilman’s door without a warrant was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but a jury awarded Cilman $0 in damages as compensation. Officer Reeves appealed the judge’s finding that he had violated the Constitution, because under state law he would be forced to resign if found guilty of a second constitutional violation.
In the 1984 US Supreme Court case Welsh v. Wisconsin, the high court ruled that “police may not make a warrantless entry into a home to make an arrest for DUI.” The US Court of Appeals panel ruled this precedent did not apply because Virginia imposes a higher fine and longer jail sentence than Wisconsin for DUI.
“No controlling Supreme Court or Fourth Circuit precedent speaks to a person’s right to be free from a warrantless entry into his home in circumstances like those in the case at hand,” the appellate judges ruled in a per curiam decision.
Cilman charged that Vienna’s police exhibited a pattern of Fourth Amendment violations, but the appellate panel dismissed this by calling the reports “isolated, unprecedented incidents.” The judges reversed every judgment in Cilman’s favor and ordered the case dismissed in its entirety.
A copy of the ruling is available in a 50k PDF file at the source link below.
Link: Cilman v. Reeves (US Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, 11/4/2011)
Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/federal-appeals-court-upholds-forced.html