Stuart O'Connell Criminal Law Blog

Police are required to obtain prior judicial authorization in the form of a warrant to enter a dwelling house for the purpose of carrying out an arrest. See Stuart O’Connell Law Blog, Arrested at Home:   Feeney Warrants, www.stuartoconnell.blogspot.ca/2017/11/arrested-at-home-feeney-warrants.html See R v. Feeney , 1997 CanLII 342 (SCC); Sections 529-529.5, Criminal Code (“Feeney warrants”). There are three well-established exceptions to this constitutional and statutory requirement:   a.        hot pursuit,  b.       exigent circumstances, and   c.        consent.   Today’s blog deals with the exception of consent. Absent a recognized exception, a warrantless entry by the police into a dwelling house will violate section 8 of the Charter, as it constitutes an unreasonable search within the meaning of that provision.   State intrusions into the home st...

At common law, where the police had reasonable grounds to arrest a suspect and reasonable grounds to believe a suspect was in a private dwelling-house, they were entitled to enter and arrest the suspect, with or without an arrest warrant, if proper announcement was made. See R. v. Landry , 1986 CanLII 48 (SCC), [1986] 1 S.C.R. 145 , and Eccles v. Bourque et al. , 1974 CanLII 191 (SCC), [1975] 2 S.C.R. 739 ). However, in the 1997 decision of R. v. Feeney , the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the common law violated s. 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that generally, warrantless arrests within private dwellings were prohibited.  Absent exigent circumstances or cases of hot pursuit, an entry warrant would be required to enter a dwelling house to make an arrest.    R. v. Feeney , 1997 CanLII 342 (SCC), at paras. 44-51.  Parliament responded by enacting sections 529-529.5 of the Criminal Code , which, among other things, creates two di...