The home is considered to have the highest expectation of privacy in regards to protections granted by the 4th amendment. In order for police to enter or search home they must either have a warrant that has been issued by a magistrate or fit into an exception to the warrant requirement. However since the home has traditionally been regarded throughout the history of our criminal law to be a place with the highest expectation of privacy these exceptions to the warrant requirement are few and are highly scrutinized.
Generally speaking there are three exceptions to the written warrant requirement in which police may enter a home. The first one would be consent. Police may enter your home to search if you give them permission to and anything they find as a result could be used as evidence. This could also include cases where police enter a home due to an emergency in the home because generally consent will be implied. Second police may enter a home if they have probable cause to believe evidence is being destroyed in the home. In this situation the threat of evidence being destroyed must be so exigent that police would not have time to secure a warrant. This usually happens in cases involving drugs which can be easily and quickly disposed of. The third situation in which police may enter a home is if they are in “hot pursuit.” This occurs when police have probable cause to arrest someone and while in pursuit he or she runs into their home to evade police.
There are other situations in which police may be able to search or enter a home, but these are the most common exceptions to the warrant requirement that law enforcement use today to enter someone’s home.
