Cite as: 526 U. S. 603 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
to a warrant for purposes unrelated to those justifying the warrant. Id., at 706. However, we cannot say that even in light of Bills, the law on third-party entry into homes was clearly established in April 1992. Petitioners have not brought to our attention any cases of controlling authority in their jurisdiction at the time of the incident that clearly established the rule on which they seek to rely, nor have they identified a consensus of cases of persuasive authority such that a reasonable officer could not have believed that his actions were lawful.
Finally, important to our conclusion was the reliance by the United States marshals in this case on a Marshals Service ride-along policy that explicitly contemplated that media who engaged in ride-alongs might enter private homes with their cameras as part of fugitive apprehension arrests.4 The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department also at this time had a ride-along program that did not expressly prohibit media entry into private homes. Deposition of Sheriff Raymond M. Kight, in No. PJM-94-1718, p. 8. Such a policy, of course, could not make reasonable a belief that was contrary to a decided body of case law. But here the state of the law as to third parties accompanying police on home entries was at best undeveloped, and it was not unreasonable for law enforcement officers to look and rely on their formal ride-along policies.
Given such an undeveloped state of the law, the officers in this case cannot have been "expected to predict the future course of constitutional law." Procunier v. Navarette, 434
4 A booklet distributed to marshals recommended that "fugitive apprehension cases . . . normally offer the best possibilities for ride-alongs." App. 4-5. In its discussion of the best way to make ride-alongs useful to the media and portray the Marshals Service in a favorable light, the booklet noted that reporters were likely to want to be able to shoot "good action footage, not just a mop-up scene." It advised agents that "[i]f the arrest is planned to take place inside a house or building, agree ahead of time on when the camera can enter and who will give the signal." Id., at 7.
617
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