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Feb. 24, 2026 Get Citation Alerts Download PDF Add Note

Johnnie Russell v. Ryan Comstock

Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

• Citations: None known
• Docket Number: 24-1100

• Judges: Hamiltonconcurs

• Opinion

• Authorities (28)

• Cited By (0)

• Summaries (0)

• Similar Cases (4.4K)

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Combined Opinion

                        by Hamiltonconcurs

In the

United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit

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No. 24-1100
JOHNNIE E. RUSSELL,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.

RYAN COMSTOCK, COLIN POWELL, and
DAVE WOHLGEMUTH,
Defendants-Appellees.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the
Eastern District of Wisconsin.
No. 21-cr-00151-JPS — J. P. Stadtmueller, Judge.

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ARGUED SEPTEMBER 19, 2024 — DECIDED FEBRUARY 24, 2026

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Before ROVNER, HAMILTON, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges.
ROVNER, Circuit Judge. Johnnie Russell brought an action
under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that police officers of the Ra-
cine Police Department violated his Fourth Amendment
rights in the search of his apartment and vehicle. The defend-
ants sought summary judgment on the merits and on the
ground of qualified immunity. The district court granted
summary judgment on the merits in favor of the defendants.
2 No. 24-1100

Russell has appealed solely as to the grant of summary judg-
ment in favor of defendant Colin Powell regarding the war-
rantless search of his apartment.
In reviewing this appeal of the summary judgment deter-
mination, we consider solely the undisputed facts as set forth
by the parties in the district court below and those set forth in
Russell’s brief on appeal. On June 25, 2020, at approximately
1:10 p.m., Racine Police Department Officers were dispatched
to 1915 Washington Avenue, Racine, Wisconsin, for an assault
complaint. Officer Coca, who arrived at around 1:15 p.m., en-
countered Willie Cannon outside the building and learned
that he had been stabbed in the chest. Cannon identified John-
nie Russell as the person who stabbed him. The officers also
learned that both Cannon and Russell lived in the apartment
building at 1915 Washington, with Cannon in apartment 103
and Russell in apartment 202. Cannon was transported to As-
cension hospital.
Investigator Jody Spiegelhoff, Officer Colin Powell, and
Sergent Ryan Comstock arrived on scene around 2:30 pm, and
met with the building manager, Johnny Marvitz, who stated
that Russell parked his two vehicles along the east side of the
building. One of those vehicles was not presently there.
Marvitz further indicated that Russell lived in apartment 202
and that he was uncertain if Russell had gone back to his
apartment.
As Russell notes in his brief, prior to the sweep of Russell’s
apartment, Spiegelhoff told the other officers that he would
be seeking a warrant for apartment 202, but that the apart-
ment still needed to be secured to “make sure he’s not in
there, make sure he’s not hurt or anything.” Property man-
ager Jerome Howe offered to let them into the apartment, and
No. 24-1100 3

on the way up to the apartment Marvitz again confirmed with
the police what was to occur, stating “person-to-person wel-
fare check, I mean, we all understand each other here.” Howe
then unlocked the door to the apartment, and Powell con-
ducted the search that lasted only 37 seconds. Around the
same time, Spiegelhoff and Comstock secured Cannon’s
apartment by doing a sweep to ensure there was no one inside
who was injured related to the case. No persons were found
in either apartment at that time. The officers subsequently ob-
tained a search warrant for Russell’s apartment, and con-
ducted a thorough search of the apartment later that day pur-
suant to that warrant.
Russell challenges only the 37-second-long search of his
apartment. He does not challenge the thorough search con-
ducted hours later pursuant to the warrant, and does not con-
tend that anything seen in the earlier search contributed to the
warrant, nor does he challenge the granting of the search war-
rant itself. When asked at oral argument what damages he
could have as a result of that cursory sweep given his failure
to challenge the extensive search that followed, his counsel
pointed only to the potential for nominal damages and dam-
ages for emotional distress.
At the very core of the Fourth Amendment is the right for
a person to retreat into their own home and be free in that
home from unreasonable government intrusion. Payton v.
New York, 445 U.S. 573, 589–90 (1980). Warrantless searches
and seizures within a home are presumptively unreasonable,
but “this presumption may be overcome in some circum-
stances because the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth
Amendment is reasonableness.” (internal quotation marks
omitted) Kentucky v. King, 563 U.S. 452, 459 (2011).
4 No. 24-1100

Accordingly, the warrant requirement is subject to certain ex-
ceptions where the exigencies create a compelling need to act
and no time to secure a warrant, such as situations involving
hot pursuit of a fleeing suspect, the need to prevent the immi-
nent destruction of evidence, or the need to protect an occu-
pant from imminent injury or to render emergency aid. Id. at
459–60; United States v. Starnes, 741 F.3d 804, 807 (7th Cir.
2013).
In seeking summary judgment below, Powell contended
that the quick search of Russell’s apartment was a reasonable
search under the Fourth Amendment in order to protect
against any danger posed to officers or other persons in the
hallway outside the apartment, and in order to locate any per-
sons who might be injured within the apartment. Further-
more, Powell argued that even if the search was unconstitu-
tional, he possessed qualified immunity for his actions. In
granting summary judgment, the district court held that the
pre-warrant sweep of Russell’s apartment constituted a pro-
tective sweep that was reasonable under the Fourth Amend-
ment. Although characterizing it as a close case, the court con-
cluded that Powell could reasonably believe that a protective
sweep of the residence was necessary because: (1) the offense
at issue was a serious one involving violence; (2) Russell’s
whereabouts were unknown at the time of the search; (3) Rus-
sell’s residence was left unattended after the stabbing; (4) a
third, unknown person was visiting at the time of the stab-
bing, and he was unaccounted for; and (5) the search was lim-
ited in scope to the search for a person presenting a danger or
who was injured, lasting only 37 seconds. Dist. Ct. Order of
12/14/23 at 8–9.
No. 24-1100 5

Russell appealed that determination to this court. We re-
view a grant of summary judgment de novo, and can affirm a
district court’s decision on any ground that finds support in
the record as long as the parties had a fair opportunity to pre-
sent their arguments and evidence. Lexington Ins. Co. v. RLI
Ins. Co., 949 F.3d 1015, 1025 n.6 (7th Cir. 2020). On appeal, Rus-
sell again contends that the search was unconstitutional and
that Powell lacked qualified immunity.
We begin with the question of qualified immunity. The
doctrine of qualified immunity “’balances … the need to hold
public officials accountable when they exercise power irre-
sponsibly and the need to shield officials from harassment,
distraction, and liability when they perform their duties rea-
sonably.’” Wood v. Moss, 572 U.S. 744, 758 (2014), quoting Pear-
son v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009). Accordingly, in civil
claims such as this one under § 1983 for money damages, gov-
ernment officials are shielded from personal liability so long
as their conduct “does not violate clearly established statutory
or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would
have known.” Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. 7, 11 (2015) (internal
quotation marks omitted). “A clearly established right is one
that is ‘sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would
have understood that what he is doing violates that right.’”
Id., quoting Reichle v. Howards, 566 U.S. 658, 664 (2012). Exist-
ing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitu-
tional question beyond debate in order for a right to be clearly
established. Id. at 12. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has re-
peatedly admonished that the inquiry “’must be undertaken
in light of the specific context of the case, not as a broad gen-
eral proposition,’” and that “[s]uch specificity is especially
important in the Fourth Amendment context, where the
Court has recognized that ‘[i]t is sometimes difficult for an
6 No. 24-1100

officer to determine how the relevant legal doctrine … will
apply to the factual situation the officer confronts.’’ Id., quot-
ing Brosseau v. Haugen, 543 U.S. 194, 198 (2004) and Saucier v.
Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 205 (2001); see also Sabo v. Erickson, 128
F.4th 836, 844 (7th Cir. 2025) (en banc).
Where such cases do not clearly settle the right with suffi-
cient specificity to provide officials with fair notice that their
conduct violates that right, the court can proceed to dismiss
the case on that ground without ever proceeding to the merits
of the constitutional challenge. Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692,
705 (2011); Pearson, 555 U.S. at 236. In fact, the Supreme Court
has recognized that “our usual adjudicatory rules suggest that
a court should forbear resolving this [constitutional] issue. Af-
ter all, a ‘longstanding principle of judicial restraint requires
that courts avoid reaching constitutional questions in advance
of the necessity of deciding them.’” Camreta, 563 U.S. at 705
(emphasis in original), quoting Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cem-
etery Protective Assn., 485 U.S. 439, 445 (1988).
In allowing the courts discretion as to the matter, the
Court recognized numerous circumstances in which district
courts and courts of appeals might choose to address the qual-
ified immunity issue and forgo discussing the constitutional
claim on the merits. For instance, where “it is plain that a con-
stitutional right is not clearly established but far from obvious
whether in fact there is such a right,” the Court opined that
given scarce judicial resources, district courts and courts of
appeals might be understandably unenthusiastic about en-
gaging in an analysis of the claim on the merits in what would
seem to be an essentially academic exercise. Pearson, 555 U.S.
at 237. Similarly, Pearson recognized courts might be reluctant
to address the underlying merits in “cases in which the
No. 24-1100 7

constitutional question is so factbound that the decision pro-
vides little guidance for future cases.” Id. at 237.
The choice, in short, is left to the district courts and courts
of appeals as to whether to proceed in the first instance to the
qualified immunity claim. Here, for some of the same reasons
described in Pearson, we conclude that it would be preferable
to proceed directly to the qualified immunity analysis, and we
consider only whether it was clearly established law that the
officers could not conduct such a limited search to ensure
there were no injured persons in the apartment. We need not
consider the alternative claim that Powell had qualified im-
munity because it was not clearly established that a sweep
based on the safety concerns of the officers was unreasonable,
which in the circumstances presented in this case is a weaker
argument.
Qualified immunity is an affirmative defense, but once as-
serted as it was here, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to defeat
it. Leiser v. Kloth, 933 F.3d 696, 701 (7th Cir. 2019). In order to
meet that burden, the plaintiff must “show either a reasona-
bly analogous case that has both articulated the right at issue
and applied it to a factual circumstance similar to the one at
hand or that the violation was so obvious that a reasonable
person necessarily would have recognized it as a violation of
the law.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Russell does
not identify any reasonably analogous caselaw that would
have alerted a reasonable officer in Powell’s position that a
sweep of the apartment in those circumstances would be un-
reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. At most, Russell
produces cases discussing the limits of a protective sweep, but
never addresses other relevant Fourth Amendment jurispru-
dence relevant to emergency aid situations. The question in
8 No. 24-1100

countering the defense of qualified immunity here is not only
whether one exception to the warrant requirement was appli-
cable, but whether caselaw established that the search in this
case was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment under
any exceptions to the warrant requirement. Id. at 702. Russell
has not identified precedent—and we have found none—that
would have placed the constitutional issue beyond debate.
Stewardson v. Titus, 126 F.4th 1264, 1276 (7th Cir. 2025); Taylor
v. Schwarzhuber, 132 F.4th 480, 487 (7th Cir. 2025).
Existing precedent does not establish beyond debate that
the sweep of the residence in this case was unreasonable un-
der the Fourth Amendment because cases involving analo-
gous circumstances have repeatedly held that such a search
for injured persons can be constitutionally reasonable, and
Russell has identified no case to the contrary. As we dis-
cussed, the challenged search here involved a sweep of the
apartment, lasting approximately 37 seconds, to ensure that
no persons who were injured or who presented a danger were
in the apartment. The district court and the parties focus on
the law regarding protective sweeps in assessing Fourth
Amendment reasonableness, but we addressed a similar ar-
gument in United States v. Arch, 7 F.3d 1300 (7th Cir. 1993), and
held that the more relevant analysis for determining whether
the search was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment in
such circumstances was that of the exigent circumstances doc-
trine.
In Arch, after arresting Arch in the lobby of a motel, the
officers subsequently entered and conducted a sweep of his
motel room to ensure that no injured persons were in the
room. Id. at 1302. As in this case, the parties argued whether
the search was reasonable under the protective sweep
No. 24-1100 9

doctrine, which recognizes an exception to the warrant re-
quirement for a protective sweep accompanying an in-home
arrest. Under the protective sweep analysis, officers lawfully
present in the home may conduct a limited search of the
premises if there are “’articulable facts which, taken together
with the rational inferences from those facts, would warrant
a reasonably prudent officer in believing that the area to be
swept harbors an individual posing a danger to those on the
arrest scene.’” Arch, 7 F.3d at 1303, quoting Maryland v. Buie,
494 U.S. 325, 334 (1990). We held that whether that exception
extends to searches for potentially injured persons was a
question of first impression, but that we did not need to ad-
dress that issue because the propriety of a warrantless entry
in such circumstances was already recognized under the exi-
gent circumstances exception to the warrant requirement. Be-
cause the officers reasonably believed that an injured person
might be inside the motel room, we held that the search was
constitutional under that exception.
The Supreme Court in Brigham City v. Stuart, 547 U.S. 398
(2006), reinforced that the reasonableness of a warrantless
search for an injured person should be analyzed under the ex-
igent circumstances exception. The Court recognized that
searches inside a home are presumptively unreasonable un-
der the Fourth Amendment, but that the ultimate touchstone
is reasonableness, and the warrant requirement is subject to
exceptions where “the exigencies of the situation make the
needs of law enforcement so compelling that the warrantless
search is objectively reasonable under the Fourth Amend-
ment.” Id. at 403 (internal quotation marks omitted); Mincey
v. Arizona, 437 U.S. 385, 394 (1978). “One exigency obviating
the requirement of a warrant is the need to assist persons who
are seriously injured or threatened with such injury.” Brigham
10 No. 24-1100

City, 547 U.S. at 403. As the Court has repeatedly held, “police
may make warrantless entries onto premises if they reasona-
bly believe a person is in need of immediate aid and may
make prompt warrantless searches of a homicide scene for
possible other victims or a killer on the premises.” Flippo v. W.
Virginia, 528 U.S. 11, 14 (1999); Mincey, 437 U.S. at 392; Brigham
City, 547 U.S. at 403. 1 As we did in Arch, we therefore address
the challenge to the reasonableness under the Fourth Amend-
ment of the search for potentially injured persons under the
exigent circumstances exception.
The question, then, is whether a reasonable officer in Pow-
ell’s position would have understood that a warrantless
search of Russell’s apartment in these circumstances violated
the Fourth Amendment. That standard is not met, because
numerous cases have recognized that it is reasonable to search
for other potential victims when addressing a violent alterca-
tion of this kind. Powell would have no reason to know that
the facts in this case materially differed from that established
precedent such as to render the search unreasonable in light
of the exigent circumstances exception.
The only information as to the nature of the altercation in
this case was provided by the victim, Cannon. He was bleed-
ing from a wound to his chest, and after he was transported
to the hospital the officers were informed that he had suffered
a stab wound. The attack occurred in the apartment building
in which both Russell and Cannon had apartments, and

1 Although our qualified immunity analysis necessarily focuses solely

on the law at the time of the search, see Pearson, 555 U.S. at 244, we note
that the Supreme Court recently, in Case v. Montana, 146 S. Ct. 500, 508
(2026), reaffirmed the standard set forth in Brigham City, 547 U.S. at 400.
No. 24-1100 11

Cannon was outside the building when first encountered by
the officers. No other witnesses to the violent altercation were
identified or interviewed at the scene. Finally, the officers re-
ceived mixed messages as to Russell’s whereabouts. At one
time, they were told that he had departed, and they confirmed
that one of his two cars was missing from the spot in which
he parked. But according to the undisputed facts submitted
by the parties, they were also told that he could have gone
back to his apartment.
The officers were engaged in the investigative process,
and certainly were not required to believe without question
the version of events told to them by Cannon. Given Cannon’s
injury, it was clear to the officers that a violent conflict had
occurred, but they had only Cannon’s word that Russell was
the aggressor in that attack. Until that statement was corrob-
orated, it would be reasonable for officers to seek to ascertain
whether Russell was also injured in the violent incident.
As numerous cases have made clear, the officers do not
need certainty that an injured person is in the home in order
for the exigent circumstances exception to apply. For instance,
in Michigan v. Fisher, 558 U.S. 45, 45–46 (2009), the officers ob-
served, outside a residence, a pickup truck in the driveway
with its front smashed, damaged fence posts, three broken
house windows, and blood on the hood of the pickup, on
clothes inside it, and on one of the doors to the house. They
observed Jeremy Fisher inside the house, screaming and
throwing things. Id. at 46. He refused to answer their knock,
and they noticed a cut on his hand and asked if he needed
medical attention. Id. He responded with profanity and told
them to get a search warrant. Id. Although the trial and appel-
late courts had held that the entry into the house violated the
12 No. 24-1100

Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court reversed, holding
that the officers’ entry was reasonable under a straightfor-
ward application of the emergency aid exception of the
Fourth Amendment. Id. at 48. The Court held that it would be
objectively reasonable to believe that his projectiles “might
have a human target (perhaps a spouse or a child), or that
Fisher would hurt himself in the course of his rage.” Id. at 48.
In so holding, the Court rejected the arguments that the blood
could be explained by the cut on his hand and that Fisher was
apparently able to meet his own needs. The Court held that
“[o]fficers do not need ironclad proof of ‘a likely serious life-
threatening’ injury to invoke the emergency aid exception.”
Id. at 49. The Court noted that it would not meet the needs of
law enforcement or the demands of public safety to require
officers to walk away in those circumstances. Id. And the pos-
sibility that no one in fact was in need of medical assistance
did not alter that analysis. As the Court held, “[o]nly when an
apparent threat has become an actual harm can officers rule
out innocuous explanations for ominous circumstances.” Id.
“It sufficed to invoke the emergency aid exception that Fisher
had hurt himself (albeit nonfatally) and needed treatment that
in his rage he was unable to provide, or that Fisher was about
to hurt, or had already hurt, someone else.” Id. As Fisher thus
makes clear, even where the officers could not identify with
precision the third person in danger of injury, or point to a
potentially fatal injury, the emergency aid exception to the
warrant requirement can be met.
Other cases have similarly recognized that an officer need
only have an objectively reasonable basis to believe that some-
one might be injured and in need of medical aid. For instance,
in United States v. Schmidt, 700 F.3d 934, 937–38 (7th Cir. 2012),
we upheld a search of a backyard under the emergency aid
No. 24-1100 13

exception to the warrant requirement where at the time of the
search gunshots had been heard in the neighborhood and bul-
let holes were in a car adjacent to the backyard and in the du-
plex itself, and bullet casings were found on the ground in the
area. We held that under those circumstances taken as a
whole, an officer could reasonably believe at the time of the
search that people in the backyard might have been shot and
in need of immediate aid. Id. at 938. As we will explore later,
the search was upheld on that basis even though approxi-
mately two hours had passed since the shots were fired, and
even though no specific potential victim was identified. Id.
We emphasized that the officer does not need knowledge that
someone has actually been shot in order to go into the yard.
Id. In so holding, we cited to the conclusion in United States v.
Brown, 64 F.3d 1083, 1086 (7th Cir. 1995) that “it is unreasona-
ble to think ‘that the police must stand outside [the] apart-
ment, despite legitimate concerns about the welfare of the oc-
cupant, unless they can hear screams.’” Id.; see also United
States v. Maxwell, 85 F.4th 1243, 1247–48 (7th Cir. 2023) (up-
holding search where a neighbor called 911, there was no
sound from within the apartment, and the officers saw two
bullet holes in the door near the deadbolt and shell casings
outside the door, because an officer could reasonably believe
that someone inside the apartment could be injured by the
bullets that went through the door). As those cases recognize,
officers can only act on the information before them, and the
evidence that a person may be in need of immediate assis-
tance need only be reasonable, not definitive.
Russell counters that the other information known to the
officers rendered unreasonable any conclusion that Russell
was in the apartment and was injured. First, Russell argues
that the officers had been informed that Russell left the
14 No. 24-1100

building, and therefore could not possibly have reason to be-
lieve that he, or anyone else, was in his apartment and injured.
That argument, however, is problematic both factually and le-
gally. As a factual matter, the parties’ Joint Statement of Ma-
terial Facts for Summary Judgment (“Undisputed Facts”) re-
veals that the officers were given conflicting information as to
Russell’s whereabouts. It includes the statement that dispatch
had informed the officers that an assault was in progress on
the scene at 1915 Washington Avenue, and that the potential
suspect had a knife and may have gone back upstairs to his
apartment. It further states that the building manager, Johnny
Marvitz, stated that Russell lives in Apartment 202 and he
was uncertain if Russell had gone back to his apartment.
Therefore, the officers had reason to believe that Russell
might be in his apartment.
And as a legal matter, we have held in other cases that the
possibility of another alternative does not render unreasona-
ble the belief that he was in need of medical assistance in his
apartment. We addressed such a circumstance in Gaetjens v.
City of Love Park, 4 F.4th 487 (7th Cir. 2021). In that case, a doc-
tor contacted Sally Gaetjens’s emergency contact, Rosalie
Eads, when unable to locate Gaetjens after instructing her to
go to the hospital based upon her high blood pressure. Id. at
490. Eads got no response when knocking on Gaetjens door,
and the next day called the Loves Park police and told them
that Gaetjens might be experiencing a medical emergency.
The officers could not see anyone inside Gaetjens’s Loves
Park home, but noticed a full mailbox and packages on the
porch. Id. Eads informed the officers that she thought perhaps
Gaetjens was at Gaetjens’s other home in Rockford. Id. The
officers nevertheless entered the Loves Park home without a
warrant, and we upheld the search under the emergency aid
No. 24-1100 15

exception. Gaetjens argued that Eads had told the officers that
she believed Gaetjens was at the Rockford home, but we held
that the statement “just gave [Sergeant] Allton a reason to also
look for Eads in her Rockford house; it in no way contradicted
the above facts that gave Allton an objectively reasonable ba-
sis to enter the Loves Park home.” Id. at 493.
In Gaetjens, then, we recognized that if officers have a rea-
sonable basis to believe that the person in need of emergency
aid is at that location, they can enter to search for that person
even if they have conflicting information that the person may
be at a different location. The potential for an alternative sce-
nario does not itself render the search unreasonable. Officers
in a fluid situation such as the ones presented in these cases
must be able to simultaneously explore conflicting theories,
and their actions can be reasonable even if the other scenario
is ultimately determined to be the correct one. Given that
precedent upholding searches in such circumstances, we can-
not hold that the possibility that Russell was in his car instead
of his apartment would alert a reasonable officer in Powell’s
position that an emergency aid sweep of the apartment was
unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment.
Russell next asserts that the officers lacked any nexus be-
tween his apartment and the reasons that they went in. That
argument fails for the same reasons stated above. The officers
had received information that Russell might have returned to
his apartment, and the injury to Cannon indicated a violent
altercation and the extent and nature of that violence was not
clear. Given the evidence that there had been a stabbing and
that one person involved in that violence was absent and had
not been heard from, Powell had reason in light of our
16 No. 24-1100

caselaw to believe that it was objectively reasonable to fear
that Russell might be injured.
Finally, Russell contends that the emergency aid exception
does not apply here, because the delay between the officers’
arrival at the scene and their search of the apartment belied
any claim of exigency. They argue that the first officer arrived
on the scene at 1:15pm, and that the search was not conducted
until over an hour later, at around 2:43 pm. Officer Powell,
who conducted the search of Russell’s apartment, arrived on
the scene at around 2:31 pm, and Officer Spiegelhoff, who
conducted the search of Cannon’s apartment, arrived at about
2:40 pm. Russell contends that the delay of an hour and a half
between the first arrival and the warrantless search renders
the search unreasonable because it makes clear that the offic-
ers could have obtained a warrant prior to the search.
In order for Russell to succeed on this basis and defeat the
claim of qualified immunity, any reasonable officer would
have known that the passage of time itself defeats the exi-
gency and renders the emergency aid exception inapplicable
and the search, accordingly, unreasonable. But we have re-
peatedly upheld searches under the emergency aid exception
involving significant time delays, including, for instance, de-
lays of nine hours, Sutterfield v. City of Milwaukee, 751 F.3d 542,
562 (7th Cir. 2014), two hours, Schmidt, 700 F.3d at 938, and
one hour and fifteen minutes, United States v. Salava, 978 F.2d
320, 325 (7th Cir. 1992). In those cases, we held that the urgent
need to provided medical aid as quickly as possible did not
dissipate with the passage of time, rendering warrantless en-
try reasonable.
For instance, in Schmidt, we noted that the exigency in
emergency aid situations was the potential for a wounded
No. 24-1100 17

victim, not the threat of further shooting, and that “the victim
would not have become any less wounded after two hours
had passed; to the contrary, he would need immediate aid.”
Schmidt, 700 F.3d at 938. We held that even though two hours
had passed during which a warrant presumably could have
been obtained, at the point of the search “[i]t would not have
made sense for an officer to wait for a warrant when a shoot-
ing victim could have been dying in the yard, and the officer
also did not need to know that someone had actually been
shot in order to go into the yard.” Id. Similarly, in Sutterfield,
we held that “although we agree … that emergencies do not
last forever, it would be folly for us to try to declare ex ante
some arbitrary cut-off that would apply to all emergency aid
cases.” Sutterfield, 751 F.3d at 562. Given our cases recognizing
that the passage of time does not necessarily render a war-
rantless search unreasonable where officers reasonably could
believe that a person in the area to be searched was in need of
immediate medical aid, it would not have been clear to Powell
that the passage of time would render the search unreasona-
ble here.
Finally, in assessing the reasonableness of a warrantless
search under the emergency aid exception, we consider also
whether the scope of the search was reasonable in light of the
exigency. Here, the parties do not contest the reasonableness
of the scope of the search. The search of Powell’s apartment
lasted for only 37 seconds, a time consistent with a search lim-
ited to the identification of injured persons in need of medical
aid. Accordingly, nothing in the nature of the sweep of the
apartment would alert a reasonable officer that the search
would violate the Fourth Amendment.
18 No. 24-1100

Given the undisputed facts in this case, therefore, Powell
is entitled to qualified immunity as to the search of Russell’s
apartment in this case, and is entitled to summary judgment
on that ground. On that basis, the grant of summary judgment
in favor of defendant Colin Powell is AFFIRMED.
No. 24-1100 19

HAMILTON, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment. I am
troubled by the defense theory that supposedly exigent
circumstances justified a warrantless entry well over an hour
after the first officer arrived on the scene, especially in the
absence of any more specific information about an immediate
and ongoing threat to anyone’s safety. See United States v.
Delgado, 701 F.3d 1161, 1164–65 (7th Cir. 2012) (suppressing
evidence found in warrantless search: “The mere fact that the
shooter was generally at large is not enough for a reasonable
officer to specifically believe that he was in the apartment.”).
Nevertheless, Judge Rovner’s careful opinion for the court
explains persuasively why plaintiff Russell has failed to
defeat Officer Powell’s defense of qualified immunity. Powell
and the other officers had to make decisions in the face of
conflicting and unreliable information about a violent crime
with the chief suspect on the loose. Moreover, the 37-second
intrusion into Russell’s apartment caused him no discernible
harm. I agree we should affirm the judgment of the district
court.