Retired_grumpy_bastard
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It’s always best for you to get a search warrant. If you have a warrant, you demonstrate good faith, and the defense has a burden of proving the warrant was invalid. If you don’t have a warrant, and you conduct a search, the burden of proving your search was legal, is on you.
This is the law where I live. Laws differ in all states, so I won’t speculate on what the law is, in Idaho.
There are of course exceptions to a search warrant, such as exigent circumstances. An example of exigent circumstances would be you are on patrol and you observe smoke and flames coming from a house. You ring the doorbell and get no answer. A neighbor runs outside and yells “PEOPLE ARE IN THERE”!! You kick in the door, to save lives, and find no people, but as you check the house, for people, you stumble across a bag of cocaine, a crack pipe and $200,000 in cash, all on the living room floor, out in the open. No, you don’t get to open kitchen cabinets, or desk drawers, because the people you are hoping to save can’t fit in there.
Responding to a call about an unconscious person, would be a medical emergency and would fall under exigent circumstances. That being said, after it’s determined that no one survived, I would back off and get a warrant.
What if the killer is a roommate? His attorney would almost certainly argue his client never gave consent for his bedroom to be searched and no warrant was issued. If he’s successful, any evidence found, like a bloody knife, can be ruled inadmissible. Nip all of that in the bud, by getting a warrant.
There are other exceptions to search warrants, such as plain view, the motor vehicle exception, consent, etc. All that aside, always get a warrant, unless there is no other way around it. You did your job, putting the bad guy in jail. Make the defense attorney do his job!
