Macdonald v. Town of Eastham, No. 13-1779 (1st Cir. 2014)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff was charged in state court with offenses related to the manufacture and possession of marijuana after a neighbor reported to the police that the door was wide open at Plaintiff’s vacant home, and the police entered the home. The charges were dropped when a state court judge suppressed the evidence found in Plaintiff’s home. Plaintiff subsequently sued the Town of Eastham, two police officers, and a crime-scene investigator who had assisted in the search in the federal district court, alleging, among other claims, that Defendants had deprived him of his Fourth Amendment rights in violation of 42 U.S.C. 1983. The district court dismissed the complaint, holding that the officers who searched Plaintiff’s home were entitled to qualified immunity. The First District Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that because there is no clearly established law that would deter reasonable police officers from affecting an entry such as the one in this case, the individual defendants were entitled to qualified immunity.
The court issued a subsequent related opinion or order on March 28, 2014.
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