Hot pursuit

Hot pursuit (also known as fresh or immediate pursuit) refers to the urgent and direct pursuit of a criminal suspect by law enforcement officers, or by belligerents under international rules of engagement for military forces. Such a situation grants the officers in command powers they otherwise would not have.

Hot pursuit has long formed a part of English common law. The principle can be traced back to the doctrine of distress damage feasant, which allowed a property owner to detain animals trespassing on his land to ensure that he was compensated for the damage they had caused (though only during the trespass itself). In particular, a case in 1293 held that a property owner could also chase after trespassing animals leaving his land and catch them if he could. Later cases extended this idea to allow a property owner to distrain the goods of a tenant behind on his rent outside his property (in Kirkman v. Lelly in 1314) and peace officers to make arrests outside their jurisdiction.

In 1939, Glanville Williams described hot pursuit as a legal fiction that treated an arrest as made at the moment when the chase began rather than when it ended, since a criminal should not be able to benefit from an attempt to escape.

Because of its pedigree in English law, the principle has been exported to many former colonies of the British Empire, including the United States and Canada.

Under United States law, hot pursuit is an exigent circumstance that allows police to arrest a criminal suspect on private property without a warrant, which would generally be a violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches, seizures, and arrests. The Supreme Court first articulated this principle in Warden v. Hayden in 1967.

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