Cite as: 510 U. S. 510 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
Elder's arrest as it in fact transpired, the District Court said, then the matter of exigent circumstances would present a triable issue. 751 F. Supp., at 865.1 But, the District Court concluded, it was not clear that the warrant requirement applied when officers surrounded a house and requested an individual inside to come out and surrender. For that scenario, the one presented here, the District Court "found no controlling Idaho or Ninth Circuit case law." Id., at 866. The District Court accordingly granted summary judgment for the officers on qualified immunity grounds. See, e. g., Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 818 (1982) (officials "are shielded from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known").
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit noticed precedent in point missed in the District Court: United States v. Al-Azzawy, 784 F. 2d 890 (CA9 1985), cert. denied, 476 U. S. 1144 (1986). Al-Azzawy, the Court of Appeals observed, involved a suspect seized outside his surrounded home. The Al-Azzawy decision, published over a year before Elder's arrest, "might have alerted a reasonable officer to the constitutional implications of putting a suspect under arrest after he had come outside his house pursuant to an order to exit." 975 F. 2d 1388, 1391-1392 (1991).2 Indeed, Al-Azzawy explicitly "reaffirmed the rule that 'it is the location of the arrested person, and not the arresting agents, that determines whether an arrest occurs within a home.' [Al-Azzawy, 784
1 According to depositions before the District Court, Elder had access to guns in the house, a consideration that might support an exigent circumstances plea. On the other hand, the police started to plan for the arrest five days before it occurred, a factor that might tug against a finding of exigency.
2 Elder's brief in the Court of Appeals did cite Al-Azzawy, albeit without elaboration. Brief for Appellant in No. 91-35146 (CA9), p. 9. There was cause for Elder's caution: The ultimate holding of Al-Azzawy was that exigent circumstances justified the warrantless arrest. Cf. n. 1, supra.
513
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