THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK RESPONDENT v. SETH LARSON DEFENDANT APPELLANT (2026)

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

It is hereby ORDERED that the judgment so appealed from is unanimously affirmed.

Memorandum: Defendant appeals from a judgment convicting him, upon a jury verdict, of murder in the second degree (Penal Law § 125.25 [1]), tampering with physical evidence (§ 215.40 [2]), and concealment of a human corpse (§ 195.02). The prosecution arose after a police officer responded to defendant's house for a welfare check and eventually discovered, under a tarp in the backyard, a human torso that was later identified as that of defendant's live-in girlfriend. We affirm.

Defendant contends that the warrantless searches of his home were not justified pursuant to the emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, § 12 of the New York Constitution, and that County Court (Bailey Turner, J.) thus erred in refusing to suppress all tangible and other evidence obtained by the police as a result of those searches. It is a “fundamental principle that the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, § 12 of the New York Constitution ‘accord special protection to a person's expectation of privacy in [their] own home’ ” (People v Rodriguez, 77 AD3d 280, 283 [2d Dept 2010], lv denied 15 NY3d 955 [2010], quoting People v Knapp, 52 NY2d 689, 694 [1981]; see Florida v Jardines, 569 US 1, 6 [2013]). In that regard, “[t]he curtilage of the home—the area immediately surrounding and associated with the home or the area that is related to the intimate activities of the home—is part of the home itself” (People v Theodore, 114 AD3d 814, 816 [2d Dept 2014], lv denied 23 NY3d 968 [2014], cert denied 574 US 1073 [2015]; see Jardines, 569 US at 6-7). “[S]ubject only to carefully drawn and narrow exceptions, a warrantless search of an individual's home is per se unreasonable and hence unconstitutional” (Knapp, 52 NY2d at 694; see Michigan v Fisher, 558 US 45, 47 [2009]). “One such exception is the emergency doctrine” (Rodriguez, 77 AD3d at 283).

In People v Mitchell (39 NY2d 173 [1976]), the Court of Appeals set forth a three-prong test for determining whether the police are presented with an emergency situation that justifies a warrantless intrusion into a protected area: “(1) [t]he police must have reasonable grounds to believe that there is an emergency at hand and an immediate need for their assistance for the protection of life or property[;] (2) [t]he search must not be primarily motivated by intent to arrest and seize evidence[; and] (3) [t]here must be some reasonable basis, approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be searched” (id. at 177-178). Subsequently, however, the Supreme Court of the United States in Brigham City v Stuart (547 US 398 [2006]) expressly rejected the second prong of the Mitchell test, holding that “[a]n action is ‘reasonable’ under the Fourth Amendment, regardless of the individual officer's state of mind, ‘as long as the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify [the] action,’ ” and thus “[t]he officer's subjective motivation is irrelevant” to the analysis of the emergency doctrine under the Federal Constitution (id. at 404). Instead, the federal standard provides that “police may enter a home without a warrant when they have an objectively reasonable basis for believing that an occupant is seriously injured or imminently threatened with such injury” (id. at 400). The Court of Appeals has not yet resolved whether the New York Constitution requires retention of the second prong of the Mitchell test (see People v Doll, 21 NY3d 665, 671 n [2013], rearg denied 22 NY3d 1053 [2014], cert denied 572 US 1022 [2014]; People v McBride, 14 NY3d 440, 447 n [2010], cert denied 562 US 931 [2010]; People v Dallas, 8 NY3d 890, 891 [2007]; see also Rodriguez, 77 AD3d at 284).

More recently, the Supreme Court, emphasizing that “Brigham City’s reasonableness standard means just what it says, with no further gloss,” has held that the federal standard does not require that officers have probable cause for the intrusion (Case v Montana, 607 US 107, 109 [2026]). In our view, Case appears to abrogate, or at least seriously undermine, the third prong of the Mitchell test as well. Whereas the third prong of the Mitchell test requires that the police have “some reasonable basis, approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with the area or place to be searched” (39 NY2d at 177-178 [emphasis added]), the Supreme Court in Case expressly declined the invitation to put any “probable-cause spin” onto the federal standard applicable to the emergency aid exception (607 US at 116). The Supreme Court explained that the probable cause standard is rooted in and peculiarly related to the criminal investigatory context, and thus the body of law applying that standard “would fit awkwardly, if at all, in the non-criminal, non-investigatory setting at issue” in the context of the emergency doctrine (id. at 117). With respect to restrictions on the scope of a warrantless entry under that doctrine, the Supreme Court noted that “an emergency-aid entry provides no basis to search the premises beyond what is reasonably needed to deal with the emergency while maintaining the officers’ safety” (id.). But, the Supreme Court emphasized, the federal standard compels “assess[ment of] the reasonableness of that limited entry on its own terms, rather than through the lens generally used to consider investigative activity” (id.).

Here, defendant principally challenges the officer's initial entry into the fenced-in backyard of the house. We reject that challenge. The evidence adduced at the suppression hearing established that the officer was dispatched to defendant's home for a welfare check after a parent of a player on the baseball team that defendant coached reported that defendant, without explanation, had failed to show up to coach the team 48 hours earlier. Prior to his arrival at the home, the officer spoke by phone with the parent, who additionally informed him that she was concerned for defendant because it was extremely out of the ordinary for defendant to miss his coaching duties, she had called defendant several times with no answer and, when she went to defendant's home two hours earlier that day, no one answered the door and she had observed both defendant's vehicle and the girlfriend's vehicle in the driveway. After approaching the house, the officer “attempted to peer in the windows to see if anybody needed medical attention or if [defendant] was inside.” The officer could not see clearly into the house, but he heard the sound of dogs barking inside. The officer also knocked on the front door several times. The officer checked the mailbox and noticed an accumulation of a couple days’ worth of mail. At the officer's request, dispatch made inquires and confirmed that there had not been any emergency service calls to that location in the past few days and that defendant had not been admitted to any local hospital. The officer called defendant's phone but it went immediately to voicemail, and he also tried without success to contact the girlfriend by phone. Additionally, the officer used an online resource to obtain phone numbers for potential family members of defendant who could account for his whereabouts, but none of his calls to those numbers was successful. The officer attempted to speak with neighbors on both sides of defendant's house, but neither neighbor was home at the time. The officer thereafter relocated to the road on the other side of the house where the driveway to the residence connected to the backyard. There, through the chain-link fence across the driveway, the officer could see the two vehicles that the parent had reported belonged to defendant and the girlfriend. At that point, the officer decided to climb over the chain-link fence into the backyard and approach the rear of the home in order to ascertain the welfare of defendant. After entering the backyard and before discovering the torso under the tarp, the officer knocked on the back door and announced himself as a police officer, but he again heard only barking dogs, and he unsuccessfully attempted to see inside the house through a sliding glass door.

Upon “looking at the ‘totality of the circumstances’ ” (Case, 607 US at 118), we conclude that the evidence presented by the People at the suppression hearing established that the officer's warrantless entry into the fenced-in backyard of the home was lawful under the Fourth Amendment because he “had ‘an objectively reasonable basis for believing’ that his entry was direly needed to prevent or deal with serious harm” (id. at 117, quoting Brigham City, 547 US at 400). The officer knew, among other things, that defendant had missed without explanation his youth baseball coaching responsibilities 48 hours earlier, which was wholly out of character for him and thus cause for concern; that neither defendant nor the girlfriend could be contacted by phone or in person; that defendant was not located at any local hospital; and that defendant or the girlfriend could have been inside the house in need of assistance inasmuch as each had a vehicle parked in the driveway and no one appeared to be attending to their dogs. Contrary to defendant's suggestion, the officer “d[id] not need ironclad proof of ‘a likely serious, life-threatening’ injury to invoke the emergency aid exception” (Fisher, 558 US at 49) inasmuch as “the emergency doctrine is premised on reasonableness, not certitude” (Doll, 21 NY3d at 671). In light of the particular circumstances that led the officer to the premises in search of missing individuals, we conclude that the officer's limited entry into the backyard of defendant's home fell within the recognized emergency exception to the warrant requirement under the Fourth Amendment (see Brigham City, 547 US at 406-407; see generally People v Lively, 163 AD3d 1466, 1467 [4th Dept 2018], lv denied 32 NY3d 1065 [2018]).

Assuming, arguendo, that the three-pronged Mitchell test remains independently viable as the standard in evaluating the emergency aid exception under article I, § 12 of the New York Constitution, we further conclude that the officer's warrantless entry into the backyard was lawful under that standard as well. For the reasons previously discussed, we conclude that the officer had “reasonable grounds to believe that there [was] an emergency at hand and an immediate need for their assistance for the protection of life or property” (Mitchell, 39 NY2d at 177; see People v Caruth, 247 AD3d 545, 545 [1st Dept 2026]). With respect to the second prong, the officer testified that he entered the backyard to ascertain the welfare of defendant, and the People thus established that the entry was not primarily motivated by an intent to arrest or seize evidence (see People v Junious, 145 AD3d 1606, 1608 [4th Dept 2016], lv denied 29 NY3d 1033 [2017], reconsideration denied 29 NY3d 1129 [2017]). Given the combination of the accumulation of mail, the apparently unattended dogs, the presence of two vehicles in the driveway, and the officer's inability to see the interior of the house or make contact with any occupants thereof by way of the front of the house, the evidence also established under the third prong that there was a reasonable basis, approximating probable cause, to associate the emergency with defendant's residence, thereby justifying the officer's limited entry into the backyard of the premises in his attempt to see if defendant or the girlfriend was located in the house (see Mitchell, 39 NY2d at 179; People v Edwards, 245 AD3d 1024, 1027 [3d Dept 2026], lv denied 45 NY3d 945 [2026]).

Defendant also contends in cursory fashion that, upon discovering the torso in the backyard and with defendant still missing, the police were not justified in later entering the home without a warrant because they waited a few hours before doing so. That contention lacks merit under both federal and state law. “[A]n entry under the emergency doctrine does not have to be immediate in order to be constitutional” (Rodriguez, 77 AD3d at 289; see Case, 607 US at 118; People v Molnar, 98 NY2d 328, 332-335 [2002]). Here, the evidence adduced at the suppression hearing established that, after discovering the torso in the backyard, the officer exited the yard and called for backup, reentered the yard to show the torso to another officer, and then waited outside the yard while additional officers secured the scene before the police eventually entered the house. We conclude that, contrary to defendant's contention, “the measured response of the police [before entering the house] does not remove the situation from the realm of emergency” under the circumstances of this case given the discovery of the torso and the fact that defendant remained unaccounted for at that time (Molnar, 98 NY2d at 332; see Case, 607 US at 118; Matter of Pablo C., 220 AD2d 235, 236 [1st Dept 1995]).

Defendant next contends that Supreme Court (Doran, J.) erred in admitting in evidence at trial video footage from a security camera belonging to a business located across the street from defendant's house. The video footage included audio of arguing and screaming on the night of the murder, and defendant contends that the video footage was irrelevant because there was no affirmative proof that the recorded sounds came from his residence. We reject that contention.

“ ‘Evidence is relevant if it has any tendency in reason to prove the existence of any material fact, i.e., it makes determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence’ ” (People v Frumusa, 29 NY3d 364, 371 [2017], rearg denied 29 NY3d 1110 [2017]). Here, the video footage was relevant inasmuch as it demonstrated that someone in close proximity to a business located directly across the street from defendant's home screamed at precisely the time that other evidence showed was the likely time of the murder. In addition, the screaming was preceded by two rounds of arguing over the course of more than two hours, thereby suggesting that the sounds were coming from one of the nearby residences rather than from anyone passing through the area. We conclude that “the alleged uncertainty about whether [the sounds picked up on] the videotape depicted the events at issue went to the weight to be accorded the evidence rather than its admissibility” (People v McEachern, 148 AD3d 565, 566 [1st Dept 2017], lv denied 29 NY3d 1083 [2017]; see People v Cardoza, 218 AD3d 1291, 1292 [4th Dept 2023], lv denied 40 NY3d 996 [2023]). Contrary to defendant's contention, the possibility that the arguing and screaming came from some source other than the home where a part of the girlfriend's body was discovered days later “was not so great as to make the evidence ․ irrelevant” (People v Purdy, 154 AD3d 1306, 1308 [4th Dept 2017], lv denied 30 NY3d 1108 [2018]). We have reviewed defendant's remaining challenge to the video footage evidence and conclude that it is without merit.

Entered: October 2, 2026

Ann Dillon Flynn

Clerk of the Court